Beginning last part of october, from the edges. And then by january, the ocean ice is thick. Those were the days when the ice formed to 30 feet thick, solid ice. And you trust that youre safe on the ice. And that it provided for you. Things arent the same anymore. When the big waves are coming in. I always watch those dogs down there. When theyre scared. They always sense the bad weather. The temperatures in the arctic are rising faster than anywhere else in the world and that swift rise has brought dramatic changes to dozens of small alaska native villages along the coast. The thick ice that once protected them from storms is gone and as the earth warms, so does the land, now so soft that it crumbles into the water with each wave that hits the shore. Last night i saw homes being thrashed in my minds eye, falling into the land failure. Thats why i couldnt fall asleep. The changes have pushed communities in alaska to face an impossible question where do you go when forces beyond your control take your home . When it gets bad here, you can hear it and i know its going to erode somewhere out there. The ocean gets rough. The ice really crumbles together and if you get stuck out there, then thats it. Theres nothing you can do but find god. Kivalina, alaska 80 miles north of the arctic circle. We arrived during one of the busiest times of the year the beginning of the fall storm season. So you guys have been working 12 hours days this past week . Close to 12 hours. 10, 11 hours. A storm surge had hit just a few days before, and the villages emergency crew all volunteers had been working for days and nights, trying to make sure the waves didnt compromise the towns lifeline the airport. Every 5 minutes, were losing half an inch, the bags were dropping half an inch. Within the hour, wed have to be setting a new bag on top because they were dropping so fast. We were losing ground over there. If the sandbags dont work, people here will lose their main way in and out of the village. We used to have slush out there in the ocean to break the waves before they come in but we dont have any cold weather for our fall storm right now. Ice used to protect the shore, but its forming later every year. And as temperatures rise, the layer of frozen soil underground permafrost is melting, and its becoming easier for the waves to erode the land. Im still looking at water, im still looking at rain. For rep, the receding ice has also meant challenges in his other job as a whaling captain. Every spring time, we prepare to go out on the ice, try to get the bowhead whale. And the past maybe 5 years, the ice has been receding so bad that weve been only out there for a week or two. Twenty years ago we were out there at least a month, month and a half. This is one of our daily lifestyles frozen fish, uncooked, untouched. Remeber you guys, pray. Jesus. Bless my food, amen. Weve always lived on the land, the sea and the air. Its what we grew up on. Do you think your kids will have the same experiences you have with being able to hunt and fish, and will that be a big part of their lives . I want them to learn now but the weather its not how it used to be long ago. Its too warm, just too warm now. Maybe well have to take them to new york to go hunting. They get lots of snow over there. Go ride snow machines in new york laughs . What does that mean for your culture . Its changing. Its really changing. When fall comes, yeah. Its hard for me to sleep. Its hard to sleep nighttime when you can hear the waves, have a lot of kids that we have to evacuate. In the middle of a storm, there was 810 foot waves hitting that wall. My dad sat down me and my brother and he told us, you cannot leave this village. You have to save it. So no matter what, you cannot leave. but saving the village is becoming harder, especially because the erosion is encroaching on kivalina from both sides of the island. Sandbags only last for so long, so in 2008 a rock wall was built along the oceans edge, to shield the village from storms. Its just that this island cant take anymore. Cant take any more of the thrashing of the waves. Kivalina is run by its city council, as well as its tribal government. Millie hawley is the tribes president. People say just move to anchorage or why cant you combine with another village thats like asking us to quit being a people. If we try to commingle or move, we will lose our identity, our culture. Millie told us that the rock wall is just buying them time until they can figure out how to accomplish their real goal relocating the entire village. But the question is where . Across the lagoon on the mainland, there is a site the government says is safe, but its miles away from the ocean. It would be difficult to harvest our marine mammals, mostly because it would cost more. Burn more fuel to get out to the ocean. The village has found a site they want to move to, but the army corps of engineers says, its prone to flooding meaning Government Agencies wont help fund the move. So the village is on their own to move to that site. sighs we dont have the resources to move the whole village to that site by ourselves. They would have to do it without any support. And thats where the divide is western science and the traditional ecological knowledge. Somewhere along the lines both sides have to compromise at some point. Otherwise, you will lose 450 people. Until they can find somewhere to move to, the focus is fighting to keep the sea from taking what land they have left. The crew was able to stop the erosion from reaching the airport. But that means state officials didnt declare a disaster and the city couldnt receive funds for help. If we didnt do anything the airport wouldve been gone now. And right now, were preparing for the next storm. Whether we get paid or not. We just cant sit and wait. We gotta save what we got left. Were here to fully get into the nuances of everything thats going on, not just in this country, but around the world. Getting the news from the people who are affected. People need to demand reform. Ali velshi on target. Mertarvik meaning where we fetch water from. Its not just kivalina dozens of villages across alaska are threatened by shoreline erosion. We traveled 470 miles south to newtoka yupik community off the coast of the bering sea. Tom john is the tribal administrator for the village. Where did this bank used to be . Probably 2 miles out with erosion moving so quickly, newtok took a step no other village has been able to dostart relocating the entire community. Tom and his grandson aidan took us to see the new site, 9 miles away. After evaluating a number of options and working to secure land from the federal government, this is where they voted to move to. So this is it . Yeah, this is the new site called mertarvik. This is a safe place, away from natures fury. The new village is situated on bedrock and high above sea level, but its also close to hunting grounds the Community Knows and needs. Piece by piece, its being put together, but building this site is going to cost millions of dollars, and tom told us that finding money has been difficult and slow. Thats the mec mertarvik evacuation center. Foundation is only done so far. So theyll just sit unopened until construction is ready to start. Yeah. When do you think thatll be . Hopefully by a year or two. We have to find funding for it. So this is your grandson . Do you think hell go to high school here or will he go to high school in newtok . Hopefully here. Theres kids running around but theyre just visiting because no kids live here yet cause theres no school. No, theyre just visiting for now until the school opens. But until a school does open, itll be hard for families with kids to move, and until theres 25 families, they wont even have mail service. And in order to have enough people here, they need funding for more houses. How long do you think it will take for this to be a fully functioning village . Probably in 15 years. If superman was here, we could have a city by tomorrow. laughs if newtok can find the money to build enough homes and move families over, it could unlock the door to building other infrastructure the community needs. But until then, mertarvik feels far in the future. And for newtok, it needs to happen now. The erosion is encroaching on the village at an average of 72 feet a year. The schools 10th grade science class took us with them to see how much land they lost after a recent storm. Its part of their ongoing project to keep track of the erosion. 55 feet, 8 inches. So when were these measurements taken . These measurements were taken in september, probably about midway through. So just a month later, youve gone from 83 feet to 55 feet . Yeah. Alright, lets head back. The big issue is that we dont have any governance capacity to relocate populations within a country because of environmental change. Relocation is not part of our disaster framework. So, our disaster framework right now is pretty much based on a concept of repairing and rebuilding in the place where that disaster occurs which, with Climate Change, is completely unrealistic. No one agency has the funding available for a relocation, so state officials have been trying to find money where they can. In anchorage, we went to talk to sally cox, whos been working with newtok to secure funding for new homes through a federal grant. Floor 50, going down. The community had to have had damages during president ially declared disasters between 2011 and 2013. Newtok is part of that, but not kivalina isnt. Exactly. So even though they were a communitty that could certainly have benefitted from this funding, we couldnt get them to qualify. A disaster has to happen before any help kicks in. What the community is trying to do is prevent a disaster. Well thats another policy issue i think that were contending with is that all of our funding right now goes to communities for these types of issues is really based on response and its not proactive. You go out for grants to trigger those funding streams that take place and thats basically what weve done with newtok. So youre finding pots of money here and there, through grants, its very piecemeal. Right, its very piecemeal and you have to be very opportunistic about it. In an effort to streamline things, the white house recently named a federal agencythe denali commissionto help communities in alaska deal with Climate Change. But the head of commission told us they wont be relocating villages like newtok or even provide the direct funding for relocations. Their role is to coordinate between the different agencies involved. When you look at the coastal villages that are in danger right now, do you see a clear order or priority and need . No. I do not. But if funds are going to be appropriated for this purpose, there needs to be a methodology that defines who should go first. Is it by necessity a competition . Yes. It is by necessity a competition. I dont believe that there will be Funds Available all at one time, so it will have to be successive in order to accomplish this. And it could well be that the mixture between safety and risk of infrastructure and cost analysis may end up with some communities with very challenging relocation or adaptation strategies being hard to serve. And what do you do for those communities then . Thats the question. Thats a tough question to answer. I think what we do is we just continue seeing how far the need is and how far the funding will take us. This may take decades. Do communities have that much time . I dont know. Right now, the army corps of engineers predicts the erosion in newtok will reach the school, the highest point in the village by 2017. The erosion is accelerating and the funding is really slow. Seems like nature and the land is not waiting for the funds. You have all these different Government Agencies from the tribe, to the state to the federal government saying, yes the relocation needs to happen, but no Government Agency actually has the responsibility to do it. Were getting these warning signs that we really need to figure this out now and my concern is that we wont and that you know, whats happened with newtok, shishmaref and kivalina will be the fate of other communities on the coast in the us for certain, and the only question is when. Whoever say that Global Warming does not exist that is not true. Somebody must be living in a big city without walking out to tundra or going to small villages. Even if kivalina could find a place to move with government support, that wouldnt stop the ice receding and the changes its brought to their way of life. Although goals have been set internationally to limit emissions, its still unclear how or when those targets will actually be met, and if theyll be able to reverse the tide with so much opposition from congress. We simply disagree with the president on the urgency of the issue. The pseudoscience behind the manmade Climate Change threat. Climate change has happened since god created our earth. Its hard to imagine a day when the erosion stops. Theyre the ones who put our people here. On this sand spit. The government came and built a school. And forced them to move. You cant adapt anymore, you just got to get out of the way. Colleen swan has worked in kivalinas City Government and also served as tribal administrator for many years. You cant expect to accomplish very much when somebody else is in control. Youre very limited in what you can do. With so many hurdles to accessing government funding and constant inaction in congress, kivalina tried a different path to combat the islands erosion. In 2008, they sued the top oil, coal and Utility Companies for damages from emissions. Why did you pursue a lawsuit against the Oil Companies . Because they did all this damage to the planet they should probably pay for it. I mean, you go out there and you mess up something, youre expected to pay as an individual. A year later, the Court Dismissed the case saying it was a political, not legal matter, so the community appealed. Lucy adams, an elder of kivalina, traveled to San Francisco during the case and brought seal skins she worked on to show the changes shes seen from the rising temperatures. If the weather is warm, it wont turn out white. It has to be frozen from cold weather all the time. It wont turn out if its warm weather, never. Ultimately the appeals court, sitting thousands of miles away in california, threw out the case, saying it was a matter for congress, leaving the village basically back where they started. Remember we always elect leaders. We always try to choose people who we think will help us when theres an election. But sometimes some of them, when they win, they change around, forget their promises to help people. What about holding the Oil Companies responsible and Holding People who pollute responsible if its causing Global Warming . Whose job is that . Sometimes i always think this way. Im talking for nothing, nothing is changing. Why talk. If they wont help . Last fall we had a minor storm you know the fall storm. And i just stood on my porch and it was pitch black, listening to the roar of the ocean. And so i decided im just gonna go back to bed and sleep it out. And it felt good. It felt good to just for once not worry about being washed away or losing land. But the next morning i woke up and i went around to see what kind of damage was done. You know, i thought of the climate deniers. This is what they enjoy. Go to sleep, believing that climate is not changing. Were people were human people we need help. Were not animals. I always say that, when they cant hear what were saying. We want our children to live. We dont want them to float around above the water with no help at all. Why dont somebody think were humans too . I wish somebody could think that way