SAN FRANCISCO, May 19 (Xinhua) -- Anchorage, the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska, will vote on a climate change bill next week to minimize the effects of climate change, the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) reported Sunday.
The Anchorage Assembly will convene next week to debate the Climate Action Plan, which urges Anchorage to cut dramatically greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades and to work out a mechanism to monitor the effects of climate change on local communities.
"The plan itself does not change our policies or our codes. It just says, here's the direction we're working toward," Shaina Kilcoyne, energy and sustainability manager of Anchorage, told the newspaper.
The plan, which covers a broad sectors such as land use, transportation, energy, consumption and solid waste, lays out a significantly different scenario for the city of Anchorage in 2050, when greenhouse gas emissions are supposed to be reduced 80 percent from 2008 levels. Anchorage has set a temporary goal of cutting the emissions by 40 percent by 2030.
A federal report released in 2018 found that Alaska is experiencing warming faster than any other states in the country.
The report also outlined challenges facing the state's fishing and subsistence hunting industries, which are threatened by the impacts of climate change, such as thawing permafrost, erosion and diminishing sea ice.
The ADN said work on the plan began around August of last year and was funded by a grant from the University of Alaska Anchorage. No details were released about how much would cost if the vision laid out in the plan is carried out.
"Many of the actions not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also create benefits which can be difficult to monetize," including improved air quality and transportation options in the city, Kilcoyne said.
