Support Library
Dear Editor: Sitka is a community that supports libraries. The Friends of Sitka Public Library would like to encourage that support through its new participation in Pick. Click. Give. Your donation makes it possible to purchase resources and programming not accounted for in the library budget.
Recent Friends purchases include podcasting equipment, subscriptions to the Seattle Times and Wall Street Journal, a Newsbanks subscription, learning stations in the children’s room, and participation in strategic planning. When you pick, click, give, our library grows stronger.
Kari Sagel, President,
Friends of Sitka Public Library
Sitkans Being Sitkans
Dear Editor: Unbeknownst to me, my driver’s license, credit card and a $20 bill fell out of my phone as I was “sprinting” by the Goldsmith Gallery on my way to the “finish line” of my 3-mile run Monday afternoon. Within five minutes, and well before I had even realized they were MIA, SPD called me at my office and reported that all three were turned in anonymously.
To the anonymous individual, please accept my warm appreciation and sincere “thank you” – not just for collecting my belongings and assuring they found their way back to me, but also for demonstrating the character of Sitka, and Sitkans!
Best Fishes, Richard Riggs
Climate Change Cost
Dear Editor: RE: ‘‘Climate Change to Cost Alaska up to $700M?’’ Jan. 3, 2019.
The annual cost estimates for climate change included in the Sentinel article and full report from the Institute for Socioeconomic Research derive from relatively certain, near-term costs derived from public information. What is left out from the annual estimates is substantial.
No costs could be estimated for losses of overland winter transportation for either extractive industries or for rural Alaskan households. No account could be made for private infrastructure damage from melting permafrost or coastal erosion or for military installations. Private infrastructure includes commercial and industrial buildings and private homes. Excluded losses also include lack of access to utilities and drinking water or temporary displacement when water and sewer lines rupture or the costs of increased risk to public health. Changes in subsistence from climate change was ignored because such changes are outside of the market. Fisheries changes could not be estimated. In other words, many of the costs that we will personally bear from climate change in Alaska cannot be estimated in the published figures, however startling they are as a percent of Alaska’s Gross Domestic Product.
Please urgently contact our federal Congressional representatives to support the bipartisan Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend bills in House and Senate which will be reintroduced into the new Congress. We need federal steps now to avert increasing costs to our state and our own pocket books.
Kay Kreiss,
Sitka Citizens Climate Lobby
