The Adults Have Left the Building

By Hal Shepherd

Act, especially at the local level. Be bold. The good news is that there is a new movement to improve resource management by inserting traditional knowledge and Indigenous realism into addressing the environmental and climate issues of the day.

I’m currently reading a book about the Klondike Gold Rush, which details one of the strangest mass movements in human history. The discovery of gold in the remote and unheard-of Klondike in August 1896 gripped an entire nation and the world. All the following winter and into the next summer, tens of thousands from all over the globe crossed oceans and continents by any means possible to reach the magic land.

The Alaska Gold Rush was, in part, the result of a lust for gold and, in part, lies, and misinformation provided by ferry boat owners, the media, cities and towns, and con men who all encouraged hapless fortune seekers to descend upon the Klondike as if gold nuggets flowed out of creeks just waiting for their arrival. A Canadian Mounted policeman described the situation in Dawson City at the time as “about four thousand crazy or lazy men, chiefly American miners, and toughs from the coast towns.” The promise of limitless wealth, however, turned out to be one of the most astonishing follies in U.S. History as the vast majority of Klondikers found that all of the claims in the gold fields had already been staked.

Like the gold rush, it appears that a large percentage of American voters experience a type of mania caused by Trump’s use of misinformation and scapegoating to make them believe their situation under the current administration was dire when, really, it was not.

A lack of proper media coverage also played a part in the disastrous election results. In a Salon, interview Dr. John Gartner, psychologist and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School and contributor to the 2017 bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President" explains that Americans were in ignorance of or uninterested in the 2024 election due, in part, to the “mainstream news media’s years of failing to properly warn the public about Donald Trump’s apparent and extreme mental unwellness, arguing that their negligence has put the country and its democracy in a position of extreme peril.”

Just days before the 2024 election, Devego gave a prediction on what we have in store by stating:

…Many Americans do not understand that we are on the verge of a type of apocalypse in this country if Trump and his MAGA Republicans and the larger fascist movement win this week's election. This lack of engagement may be from a lack of information or a failure of imagination. The future of the country is literally at stake. If we go over this cliff there's no way back. 

Did anyone happen to notice that in stark contrast to temper tantrum thrown by Trump and his supporters in the 2019 - 20, the dignity and grace with which Kamala Harrises conceded the election results this time around? It feels like all of the adults have left the building.

Indeed, Trump’s campaign strategy of lies, anger, and hate after the 2019 election resulted in the bumper stickers seen around Homer and elsewhere stating “F**k Biden and F**k You for Voting for Him.” And it’s probably no coincidence that just days after the 2024 election, at 5:30 am on Monday morning and again that same evening, someone drove by the family planning clinic in Homer and shot several holes through the building. Luckily no one was hurt, this time.

For the sake of history as writers, it is our responsibility, for better or worse, to chronologize the extraordinary events of the times we live in, especially concerning environmental justice and the protection of Alaska’s unique fish and wildlife resources. You’ll remember that during Trump’s last term, he worked with the Alaska Delegation and the Governor’s office to expedite efforts to open the State’s wild places to extraction interests. Now he’s in the process of announcing the appointment of inexperienced MAGA loyalists to key cabinet posts. We need to prepare for the worst. After Trump won the election in 2016, journalist Peter Friederici wrote, referencing the sixth mass extinction, “What are we supposed to do with our knowledge that we live at the end of nature?”

In a State that is warming nearly four times as fast as the rest of the world, we’re experiencing the heartbreaking loss of once-mighty salmon runs in places like the Yukon-Kuskokwim, which are essential to the subsistence, economic, and emotional survival of Alaska Native communities. In a November 1 High Country News article, Alaskan journalist. Julia O’Malley, a third-generation Alaskan and James Beard Award-winning journalist, writes that in Ruby, Alaska, and more than 40 other Native Villages, inhabited by 12,000 people located along the Yukon River:

there’s a crisis not just to do with nutrition and economics — salmon is a major food source that offsets the high cost of flown-in groceries — but with culture. With a seven-year pause, a generation of children is growing up without an opportunity to practice the skills that sit at the center of their identity…

So, in response to Friederici’s question, we grieve, of course. More importantly, we must act, especially at the local level. Be bold. Act, especially at the local level. Be bold. The good news is that there is a new movement to improve resource management by inserting traditional knowledge and Indigenous realism into addressing the environmental and climate issues of the day.

As stated in my book Return to Ekeunick’s Time,

…[A]fter a largely successful campaign led by industrial interests and the republican party to discredit environmentalists, today Democratic and tribal leaders and everyday citizens are working to limit the impacts of extraction interests and are applying a new emphasis on environmental justice principles to protect water and subsistence resources and take on the existential impacts of climate change.

Trust that Shepherd Alaska and Water Policy Consulting are 100% committed to this strategy, no matter the political landscape.

One final note. In order to take care of ourselves and not fall prey to burnout, especially now, we have to get out into these places we’re trying so hard to protect. Over the next four years (and probably beyond) take care of your soul by heading out the door for a hike, make time to go kayaking, back backing, bicycling and walking in your favorite places. While you’re doing this, turn off all worries about the future and enjoy these places and the wild things that rely on them, just for the moment.

Sunset over Kachemak Bay - Photo by Jessica Shepherd