The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has rejected a petition from a group of Alaska youths that sought tougher state regulation of greenhouse gases.
In a letter dated Wednesday, DEC commissioner Larry Hartig told Alaska Youth for Environmental Action that “there are both practical and legal hurdles to DEC carrying out the petition’s requests.”
The petition, filed Aug. 28, was a rare “Petition for Rulemaking” that asked DEC to draft and institute regulations to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from a variety of sources. DEC spokeswoman Candice Barber wrote by email that the last rulemaking petition before this one was filed in 2007.
Allison Barnwell, program coordinator for Alaska Youth for Environmental Action, which organized the petition, wrote by email that “the group still wants bold and immediate action from the ADEC. They will be looking into all the different options available to them to make sure that our state is taking the steps needed to protect their futures.”
In August, AYEA (in conjunction with Youth Organizers and Our Children’s Trust) backed a group of Alaska teenagers as they filed the petition with DEC. The petition argued that the state of Alaska has a legal duty to do what it can to avert climate change in order to protect younger Alaskans who will experience the consequences of that change as they grow older.
Most significantly, it requested DEC to enact regulations that ensure Alaska’s carbon-dioxide emissions are 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Hartig, writing in response, said the “directives and goals in the petition are not themselves suitable for adoption as ‘regulations.’”
He also added that the petition “requires actions that are inconsistent with practical and fiscal constraints on the state and DEC.”
In a prepared statement about the rejection of the petition, AYEA youth organizer Eve Downing of Soldotna said, “When we filed the petition with Commissioner Hartig, he talked about the effects of climate change he sees through his job. So why won’t he do something about it? This is just more of the status quo.”
• Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com or call 523-2258.