March 31, 2011
Join policy makers, business and civic leaders, and industry experts from around the state, nation and world for this annual conference. Network and share information for creating a sustainable energy future for Alaska. Lea
rn about the latest developments and projects, and be part of implementing an independent energy future for Alaska that meets the state’s long-term energy needs and diversifies its economy. An exhibitor hall is open to the public. The conference will be held on April 28-29, 2011 at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage, AK. Download the final agenda here.
Register today at www.BCEAconference.com or (907) 929-7770. Early registration ends April 8th!
Speakers include:
- Former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, Director, Center for the New Energy Economy, Colorado State University
- Jerry Yudelson, National Green Building Expert and Author; Tucson, AZ
- Capt. John Hickey, Commanding Officer, US Coast Guard Shore Maintenance Command (SMC); Seattle, WA
- John Cooper, CFO, Ocean Renewable Power Company; Portland, OR
- Clay Koplin, CEO, Cordova Electric Association: Cordova, AK
- Ellen Kazary, Community Development Manager, RurAL CAP, Rural Cap Energy Wise program
- Catherine Fritz, Architect, Juneau Airport
March 31, 2011
The only conference of its kind in Alaska, Tourism and Mining: Opportunities and Costs for Bristol Bay, Alaska, will have wide ranging impacts and initiate important industry discussions about the future of tourism in Bristol Bay. Brought to you by Alaska Wilderness Recreation and Tourism Association.
For more information, contact Nelli Williams at nwilliams@tu.org or register online at: visit visitwildalaska.com. Early bird registration before April 8th is only $30! After April 8th, $50. Conference will be held May 13 at the Dena’ina Center, Anchorage from 8:30 am – 4 pm.
March 29, 2011
In her new work, Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North, Nancy Lord takes readers deep into Alaska and Canada where indigenous communities are facing the immediate effects of climate change. Order your copy of Early Warming, and listen to an interview with Nancy Lord on APRN’s “Talk of Alaska” program.
March 18, 2011
Chuitna River communities gathered in Tyonek this month to attend DNR’s second public hearing on the proposed Chuitna River coal strip mine.
The testimony given was spoken from the heart — it was focused on culture, tradition, sustenance, family and the relationship with the land. One Tyonek elder summed up what is at stake with the proposed project: “What am I going to eat? I can’t eat money, I can’t eat coal. I eat moose meat. I eat fish. I live off this land. My grandfather showed me how to do that… He passed it down through generations. How to take care of this land, and what to do about it. I knew him, and what he said. … I lived off that land, I lived off that fish. I drank that water. I didn’t go over there and buy it from California. I went over there and I chopped that water hole, I drank that water, and I packed that water…for my Grandma. That water came from that river right there, and it still comes from there. And you’re going to pollute it!”
For a firsthand account of the Tyonek hearing, read the compelling Mudflats blog.
March 5, 2011
Alaska lost a champion and a highly regarded poet and thinker when Fairbanksan John Haines passed away on March 2. Haines was the author of eighteen books of poems and essays, including his first and perhaps best-loved Winter News and the memoir The Stars, The Snow, The Fire. Over his lifetime he was the recipient of many honors, including two Guggenheim Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress. His spiritual home was always the hill country in interior Alaska, above the Tanana River, where he homesteaded after the Second World War.
ACF board president Nancy Lord, a writer herself, considered Haines a friend and mentor. “John’s art got its life from the big spaces and the deep quiet of Alaska. He was an absolute original, a sometimes cranky voice, and a defender of wild places and simple, rural ways of living. He often spoke about the importance of art for understanding our human place in the world, and he encouraged us all, Alaskans and artists, to recognize ‘the dangers and choices held out to us by our involvement with the earth.’”
“A Requiem for the Arctic Refuge” first appeared in OnEarth (Winter, 2006). Haines wrote it after an Alaskan politician famously held out a sheet of white paper and declared that the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was that—a desolate nothing, to be valued only for the oil deposits that lay underneath it.
A Requiem for the Arctic Refuge
No sign of life, no bird calls,
no mating cries from the tundra…
Only the strewn wreckage of a passing
Illness — the discards of metal
and trash left behind by those
who write sorrow on the earth,
and leave to renew their plunder.
I remember, and so must you,
the lost sweetness of this land,
and far to the south a people
for whom it was home, driven to
forage your crime-cemented streets.
I hear a voice from another age
that would speak to us now:
“Forests precede civilization,
and deserts follow…”
Tell me, citizens in your lighted
houses:
Is this what you wish
for our loaned and borrowed future?
When your houses are darkened
and your stations shut down,
your thousand-year dreampipe emptied…
And of our lost earth-bound refuge,
only a broad sheet of white paper
once held by an official hand —
now certified and fingerprinted,
smudged and stained with oil.
– John Haines
Read more about Haines and read additional poems. Also see Nancy Lord’s remembrance.
rn about the latest developments and projects, and be part of implementing an independent energy future for Alaska that meets the state’s long-term energy needs and diversifies its economy. An exhibitor hall is open to the public. The conference will be held on April 28-29, 2011 at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage, AK. Download the final agenda here.