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Washed Away : Obama's Arctic Visit Buoys Climate Refugees
Not so very long ago, the elders of Shishmaref, Alaska, warned the younger generation that cataclysmic change was coming to their tiny village on a barrier island perched just above the Bering Strait, where families still survive on seal meat and caribou soup.
"The elders that passed away used to say that someday we'll have no winter. It's happening now," said Jimmy Seetomona, 48, one of about 600 people who live in the village just 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
"I've noticed a lot of changes in my time," Seetomona added, surveying a coastline that has been shrinking as much as 20 feet a year. "There were a lot of homes here a few years ago."
Shishmaref, three square miles on the state's western edge, is one of more than two dozen villages that are washing into the ever-rising sea, making their residents the nation's first real climate change refugees.
President Obama's historic trip to the region this week will bring unprecedented attention to their plight and the double-bind they face.
If they stay, they could lose everything to flooding and erosion. If they leave, they cut ties with ancestral land that has sustained them, and kept their traditions alive, for centuries.
And there's no guarantee they can leave. The government estimates it would cost $300,000 a resident to relocate each villager — if they even can find a suitable inland site.
"It's not easy to move a village," Cheryl Rosa of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission said on a recent visit to Shishmaref with NBC News.
"Even if you move five miles down he coast, it's a whole different ballgame," she added. "You're going to be that much farther away from where your marine mammal resources are and your fish resources are, and that's problematic. That's more fuel, more time, more danger, especially on unsafe ice."
Image: A map shows the location of Shishmarek, Alaska.
Global warming may be an issue for all of America, but it's happening twice as fast in the Alaskan Arctic, where President Obama is on a historic mission this week to highlight climate change.
With less sea ice to hold down waves, storm surges are washing away land, damaging homes and threatening water and sanitation systems in vulnerable villages like Shishmaref.
Washed Away : Obama's Arctic Visit Buoys Climate Refugees
Not so very long ago, the elders of Shishmaref, Alaska, warned the younger generation that cataclysmic change was coming to their tiny village on a barrier island perched just above the Bering Strait, where families still survive on seal meat and caribou soup.
"The elders that passed away used to say that someday we'll have no winter. It's happening now," said Jimmy Seetomona, 48, one of about 600 people who live in the village just 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
"I've noticed a lot of changes in my time," Seetomona added, surveying a coastline that has been shrinking as much as 20 feet a year. "There were a lot of homes here a few years ago."
Shishmaref, three square miles on the state's western edge, is one of more than two dozen villages that are washing into the ever-rising sea, making their residents the nation's first real climate change refugees.
President Obama's historic trip to the region this week will bring unprecedented attention to their plight and the double-bind they face.
If they stay, they could lose everything to flooding and erosion. If they leave, they cut ties with ancestral land that has sustained them, and kept their traditions alive, for centuries.
And there's no guarantee they can leave. The government estimates it would cost $300,000 a resident to relocate each villager — if they even can find a suitable inland site.
"It's not easy to move a village," Cheryl Rosa of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission said on a recent visit to Shishmaref with NBC News.
"Even if you move five miles down he coast, it's a whole different ballgame," she added. "You're going to be that much farther away from where your marine mammal resources are and your fish resources are, and that's problematic. That's more fuel, more time, more danger, especially on unsafe ice."
Image: A map shows the location of Shishmarek, Alaska.
Global warming may be an issue for all of America, but it's happening twice as fast in the Alaskan Arctic, where President Obama is on a historic mission this week to highlight climate change.
With less sea ice to hold down waves, storm surges are washing away land, damaging homes and threatening water and sanitation systems in vulnerable villages like Shishmaref.
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