To the Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor & Assembly, 

We the undersigned, support the adoption of a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan for the Fairbanks North Star Borough that reduces emissions, saves energy and money, creates local jobs, improves air quality, increases community resilience, centers racial and economic equity, and encourages various government and non-government entities to work together for these goals. The Interior is already seeing the effects of a changing climate, from intense wildfires and freeze-thaw events, to devastating impacts on salmon returns. Our local elected leaders have struggled to implement adequate climate adaptation, mitigation, and emergency preparation measures for our region, and every season costs residents thousands in damages. 

Over the past year, the Borough Assembly's Climate Action Committee and its contractor have worked closely to gather robust community input to craft a plan that best fits our community's challenges and needs. The solutions in the original version of the plan are locally suitable adaptations of commonsense actions being used by communities across the state already as best practices in municipal policy, and have the potential to unlock substantial new investment into our community. The original version of the plan incorporates a wealth of public input from over the last year, and has seen overwhelming support from Borough residents.

Despite the broad popularity of the plan, the newly appointed presiding officer Aaron Lojewski abruptly dismissed the entire Climate Action Committee a month from plan completion. This committee serves as an advisory body to the contractor who is developing the plan. The former committee was made up of a group of 6 highly qualified community members, including internationally recognized scientists and Indigenous leaders, who had all gone through an extensive and transparent selection process. The new committee is a group of people chosen by Lojewski behind closed doors, whose qualifications are unclear, and who hadn't been involved in any part of the planning process previously. Lojewski has publicly stated his opposition to climate action, so this move seems intended to undermine the effectiveness of the plan.

The new committee members have now finished making their radical cuts to the plan. Their edits have involved the removal of language relating to climate change, emissions, pollutants, greenhouse gas reduction, equity and “meeting the needs of diverse groups,” and replacing a goal to shift to renewable energy with one focused on natural gas. Lojewski's appointees have also removed goals to maintain the safety and accessibility of our roads, sidewalks, and trails in the winter, and seem intent on ensuring the Borough can't coordinate with any other entity to help achieve their goals. These edits completely strip the plan of its effectiveness and undermine the robust public process that led to the contents of the original plan. They are a slap in the face to the hundreds of community members who have given their time, and the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars that went into the original planning process.

As borough residents, we believe it is critical that our elected leaders take the health and safety threats of climate change seriously. We demand a real Climate Action and Adaptation Plan - one that takes into account the severity of the climate crisis, the critical need to reduce emissions, the safety and security of Borough residents as the climate crisis intensifies, and the need to center equity and Indigenous leadership in the process. We demand that the current committee and Assembly demonstrate the real leadership that Fairbanks needs.