Alaska is approaching a once in a generation opportunity to create long-term job growth and a sustainable economy while making historical strides towards climate justice. We need jobs that align with community needs, are informed by local knowledge, and expand skill sets to create a stronger, more diversified economy. As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, now is the time …
Leg With Louie: A Green Bank in a Bill Made Better
HB 170 proposes to create an Energy Independence Program and Fund administered by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. This bill, and its Senate companion, SB 123, would be Alaska’s first attempt at forming a Green Bank. In general terms, a Green Bank is a public, quasi-public or non-profit entity explicitly established to facilitate private investment into domestic low-carbon, …
With our futures on the line, Supreme Court nomination process must not be rushed
Supreme Court justices leave a legacy, and that legacy includes a lasting impact on our nation’s ability to address the climate crisis. With the recent death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so much hangs in the balance. Here in Alaska, we will be impacted by rulings on public lands, air pollution, and environmental justice for frontline communities. Finding the right …
Group of Alaskans call out EPA clean car rollbacks
A group of Alaskans, including elected officials and local advocates, are calling for a return to previous federal Environmental Protection Agency clean car standards. The EPA rolled back the standards for lowering the fuel efficiency and emissions standards for new vehicles in March. The rollback still increases the stringency of corporate average fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions standards by …
Leg With louie: To Bag or not To Bag
The Novel Coronavirus has caused changes in how we interact. With people, with time itself, and with things. Wearing or not wearing a mask in public has become a political act to some. Distillers of fine gin are now distilling sanitizing hand gel. Single-use plastic bags are temporarily rescued from their glide path to oblivion by frontline retail workers deeming …
Leg with Louie: Toward an Electric Tomorrow
Imagine, some future day after a bruising legislative session, our legislators and staff head homeward from Juneau, in quiet vehicles that require little maintenance, have zero CO2 emissions, and that glide lightly along the highway. By the time they reached their home districts, all of the accumulated malice, rancor, and ill-will of a typical session would be gone, replaced by …
Leg With Louie: Building the new economy starts now
Yours may be cowboys, Willie, but my heroes have always been journalists. Even today, in the middle of the daily whirlwind of sheep-dip and gibberish from our highest officer in the land, with uncertainty on all horizons and a pandemic at our door, journalists are out there asking questions, arranging facts, allowing citizens a foothold of logic in the world …
Leg with Louie: Ways to participate in the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.
I am easily distracted. In the middle of trying to write that sentence, I watched a youtube video of John Prine concert footage from 1980, then read a beautiful lonesome poem by Antonio Machado, another by William Stafford. I checked in on the rhubarb bush just exposed from under the snow and already starting to sprout, and also I tried …
Lucky to have member-owned electric service
Let’s take advantage of this. We in the area serviced by Golden Valley Electric Association are lucky in that we, the ratepayers, are actually member-owners rather than customers of a private, for-profit energy provider. This gives us several advantages, not the least of which is being able to vote for the directors of our co-op in order to influence the direction …
Just Transition Summit hopes to share ideas about moving away from single resource economies
A summit next month in Fairbanks hopes to build collaboration and strategies that address the challenges of relying on oil-and-gas development. Organizers hope that the Just Transition Summit – January 8-10, 2020 – provides a space for “Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaboration to build critical thinking around economic and social transition.” “Just Transition is an exciting concept … about building a …