Interlinked Climate & Energy Challenges

2008Feb27: Kivalina, an Alaska Native village, sues nine oil companies, including Exxon Mobil Corporation, 14 power companies, and one coal company claiming their greenhouse gases emissions contribute to climate change and threaten their community’s existence. “We are seeing accelerated erosion because of the loss of sea ice. We normally have ice starting in October, but now we have open water even into December so our island is not protected from the storms,” said Kivalina City Administrator Janet Mitchell in a statement. The suit was filed in a federal court in San Francisco (CNN, 2008).

Reference: CNN. 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/26/us.warming.ap/index.html

Image Description: Kivalina, Alaska. View is to the southeast. Source: US Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library, 1999. Image Location: Wikimedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kivalina_Alaska_aerial_view.jpg Image Permission: This image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the United States Army Corps of Engineers.