Few people noticed a recent op-ed by a guy named Rick Whitbeck, who holds himself out as the Alaska Director for a group he calls Power the Future. The piece was unremarkable for the most part, but it caught my eye for its unhinged and juvenile attacks on anyone who cares about clean water, healthy salmon and wild Alaska. Then I started to...
Alaska is the most profitable oil and gas province in the world. Yet under current forecasts, Alaska is staring down the barrel of a $1.6 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year. Governor Dunleavy came into office promising to cut expenses to balance our budget. But even if he fired every state employee, he’d still wouldn’t be...
Oil and gas corporations are engaged in a radical program to transfer Alaska’s public wealth into private coffers.  For example, the oil corporations in Alaska spent $14 million in 2014 to fight back citizen-led efforts to repeal Senate Bill 21, the oil tax legislation introduced by former ConocoPhillips lobbyist Sean Parnell, and passed...
I attended a presentation this week in Homer by Mark Hamilton, Vice President of External Affairs and mouthpiece for the Pebble mine, and it was remarkable on a couple fronts. First, the tone. Hamilton spoke down to the crowd like a seasoned used car salesman, highlighting only the possible benefits of the Pebble Mine, and flatly ignoring...
Sue Mauger, Science Director at Cook Inletkeeper, connects the dots on climate change and calls out the negligence of Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy in his administration's swift removal of the Climate Action Plan from the official State website. Sign the petition to the Governor, Here! Add Your Name Originally Published in Alaska Dispatch...
ADD YOUR NAME to demand that Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy return the Climate Change Task Force information and action plan documents to the official state website. There is no debate. Our national reports read loud and clear: Alaska is warming faster than the rest of the planet and the cost of doing nothing grows every day. Alaska should be a...
Written by Sue Mauger, Science Director We live in, play around and benefit from a salmon landscape. Wild salmon unite and define us as Alaskans. We pride ourselves in living differently up here, but we are making the same mistakes that others made across the world when they chose incompatible development over salmon. Stand for Salmon is our...
ExxonMobil has donated a total of $1 Million to vote "No’ for salmon on Ballot Measure 1. In 2017, Exxon Mobil Corporation earned 2nd place on the Fortune 500 list, making it the largest privately-owned oil and energy company in the world. Exxon enjoyed profits over 19.7 BILLION dollars. Or, enough to cover the $507.5 million dollars in criminal...
I spent 38 yrs. managing fisheries from California to the Arctic, and I support Ballot Measure 1. My career included: Salmonid (salmon, steelhead, trout) management as a Pacific and North Pacific Fishery Management Council member; developing amendments to the Forest Practices Act; an advisor in US/Canada Salmon Treaty negotiations and...
For the past 23 years, Cook Inletkeeper has worked hard for clean water and healthy habitat in Cook Inlet and around Alaska. When we worked alongside residents in Tyonek and Beluga to prevent a coal company from Texas from mining through 14 miles of salmon streams on the west side of Cook Inlet, we witnessed first-hand the complicated...
