America's First Climate Refugees: Coastal Native Alaskans
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Suzanne Goldenberg, a U.S. environmental correspondent for The Guardian, spent time in Newtok and this week on the plight of its residents, whom she calls America's first climate refugees. She told weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden that the rising river poses the greatest risk.
"The river is basically stealing the land out from underneath the village," she says. "Every year during the storm season, that river can take away 20, 30, [even] up to 300 feet a year. ... It just rips it off the land, away from the village in these terrifying storms."
The town, like many others in coastal Alaska, is situated on a broad plain that becomes a mud flat every summer when the snow melts. "There's no high point there," Goldenberg says, "because so much land is being lost every year. Every year the storms get worse, every year the flood gets more intense."
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But changes in the climate have meant changes also to those centuries-old routines, according to some of the village's residents, who spoke with Goldenberg and her videographer Richard Sprenger. "The snow comes in a different time now. The snow disappears way late," says villager Nathan Tom. "That's making the geese come at the wrong time. Now they're starting to lay eggs when there's still snow and ice. We can't even travel and go pick them. It's getting harder. It's changing a lot."
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http://www.npr.org/2013/05/18/185068648/impossible-choice-faces-americas-first-climate-refugees
