The people’s Climate Plan makes a comeback
After 5 years of organizing… We won.
After much turmoil last year, the FNSB Climate Action Plan got another chance this summer. The Borough Assembly reintroduced the plan, in close to its original form, and passed it on June 27th.
We’re so grateful to these Assembly members for listening to the people, like we demanded a year ago, and finally passing the people’s climate plan. And we’re so proud of our community for the years of work they’ve put into getting us here. This is a win worth celebrating.
How We Got Here
It’s been a bit of a wild ride for the People’s Climate Plan, but we’re certainly not done yet!
The seed of the FNSB Climate Action and Adaptation Plan was first planted through the organizing and agitating of many community members, including FCAC members, in 2019, when the Borough Assembly approved a resolution to create a Joint Climate Change Task Force.
The process began in earnest in the spring of 2022 with the creation of the Assembly Climate Action Committee and the start of a robust public input process.
Through public meetings and online feedback, over 500 community members shared about the climate effects impacting them most directly, and made suggestions for ways those impacts could be mitigated. All suggestions were recorded and taken into consideration, and the result, nearly finished by November of 2022, was a well-considered plan, incorporating input from a broad array of community members, and integrated by Climate Action Committee members who had been selected for their diversity of expertise areas related to the plan.
After the 2022 Borough election, Aaron Lojewski was named presiding officer of the Borough Assembly, and his immediate first move was to replace every well-qualified member of the Climate Action Committee, who had gone through an extension selection process, with Lojewski’s political allies with zero to dubious qualifications. None of the new committee members had taken part in the public input process previously. Following immediate public backlash, Lojewski proceeded to reinstate one member of the committee, award-winning UAF ecologist Terry Chapin. Chapin was the lone voice for climate action on the committee.
The new “climate inaction committee” (which, to be clear, refers to all members but Chapin, the steady but ignored voice for reason) proceeded to gut the plan beyond recognition. Key elements that were removed included language to track and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, language about shifting to renewable energy, the words “climate change,” (replaced with “weather events,”) as well as language around equity and increasing access to local services like sidewalks and public transportation.
By the time the new plan was brought to the Assembly for a vote, it was a joke. After 3 hours of public testimony in support of reinstating elements of the original plan, and hours more of climate-denying assembly members obstructing every effort to reinstate the most critical elements of the plan, the plan that was voted on was a shell of what it formerly was, or as O’Neall said, “an underwhelming, disrespectful, undermined, ignorant, blatant subversion, less hopeful version of what our community could be.” Ultimately, the plan was unanimously voted down.
Assemblymembers Haney, Wilson, Cash, Lojewski, and Rotermund voted it down seemingly because they thought the plan should have never been written (Cash even expressing the idea that nothing can or should be done about climate change). Meanwhile O’Neall, Kelly, Fletcher, and Guttenberg voted against it because they felt it had been gutted to the point of ineffectiveness.
The People’s Climate Plan makes a Comeback
On June 27th, 2024, the climate plan was given a second shot. This time, it came before a much more climate-friendly assembly.
Dozens of community members showed up to support the plan, and gave hours of impassioned testimony pointing to the critical need for climate action and adaptation measures in our community.
At around 2:00 in the morning, the People’s Climate Plan was passed.
We’re beyond excited about this win, and we’re so proud of the members of our community who have showed up throughout the course of this plan’s circuitous path to passage.
This is just the first step toward getting the changes we need in our community to truly respond to the climate crisis. To learn more about what’s next, check out the Policy and Politics Working Group, or email bella@fbxclimateaction.org.
