By Tristan Glowa, Organizing Director at Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition

As we’re facing down instance after instance of climate change-fueled weather events, it should be clear: Fairbanks needs a Climate Action & Adaptation Plan, and we need your help winning it.

Come join us on August 9 to dream up what we need and make plans for how we’ll get it. RSVP on Facebook here.

This summer has certainly been more proof that Fairbanks is very much in a new climate reality; we’ve now faced a freak windstorm, blazing temperatures, an extended drought throughout Alaska, and choking smoke from another record-breaking wildfire season. All of this is coming after a winter with record snowfall, a catastrophic ice storm, and a destructive breakup season. With year after year of shifting baselines, it can become easy to become numb to the scale of the change we’re living through – but we must resist that. We are living through the crisis that the fossil fuel economy has created, and unless each of us do our part to transition our energy systems swiftly, it will get a lot worse than it already is.

Regardless of however fast progress moves elsewhere, we here in Fairbanks have both a moral obligation and the people power to demand our local institutions act as swiftly as possible to do our part in this energy transition. The fight against climate change offers a lot to look forward to – from a more democratic energy system, to good unionized green jobs, an opportunity to repair historic injustices, more connected & healthy communities, and much more – but it remains at its core a matter of limiting the scale of damage. There will never be a point where we can admit defeat, because any extra percent of a degree of warming will always lead to more extreme weather, damaged communities, ecological chaos, and human suffering. All this is to say that, regardless of how unsettling it might be to see the possibility for congressional action to address climate change during this federal administration in turmoil, local climate movements duty will still be to win every possible action we can at every level.

We should be encouraged, then, by the power of organized Fairbanksans to win local action whether that be by calling for a clean-powered GVEA or through our local government – and it’s our duty now to demand an aggressiveFairbanks North Star Borough Climate Action & Adaptation Plan that our community needs. Committed GVEA member-owners proved that, with years of dedicated work to organize our neighbors, speak up, and change the conversation, we could help our community change course like we did when the GVEA board voted to begin our transition away from coal last month. Let’s do the same thing in our Borough now!