Letter: Legislature fails to fund climate disaster preparedness and response

For decades, the Alaska Legislature has ignored requests by Alaskans to establish a climate disaster preparedness and response fund, with revenues from a nominal tax on oil production (which has contributed to increased climate disasters). While reaping billions of dollars from oil taxes and royalties, Alaska has relied almost exclusively on easy federal money to pay for its climate disaster response, including costs of severe storms like Typhoon Merbok in 2022, floods, wildfires, village relocation, infrastructure hardening, fishery failures, coastal erosion, permafrost thaw, etc. Astonishingly, Alaska has done virtually nothing proactively regarding climate disaster mitigation or preparedness. Investments in climate disaster mitigation today will save many times the money in the future. And now, as the days of easy federal money are over, Alaska simply has to step up and begin paying its own way on this.

Alaska is without doubt the state most at risk from climate disasters, the costs of which are projected to grow into the billions of dollars in the coming decades. Yet other states are far ahead of us in funding such climate disaster efforts. For instance, just this month, the State of Hawaii established an additional 0.75 percent levy on hotels and vacation rentals, and an additional 11 percent tax on cruise ships in order to fund its costly efforts to mitigate climate disasters. Hawaii’s new taxes are projected to generate $100 million per year to address its urgent climate needs.

If Hawaii can tax its multibillion-dollar tourism industry to better prepare for and respond to climate disasters, Alaska should be able to tax its multibillion-dollar oil industry to do the same. At today’s oil production rate, a 10-cent per barrel tax would generate about $20 million per year. Alternatively, the legislature could enact a tax on Alaska’s tourism industry (as in Hawaii), or dedicate a portion of the state’s expected Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) revenues (unless the bills currently before Congress to repeal this federal tax credit are adopted into law). Regardless, climate disaster funds will need to come from somewhere — if not a dedicated fund such as this, monies will need to come from the state’s general fund at the expense of other state appropriations, including the PFD.

It is high time the Alaska legislature stops ignoring this urgent need and establishes a substantial, dedicated climate fund with which the state can better address the mounting costs of climate disaster prevention, preparedness, and response.

— Rick Steiner, Anchorage

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