A School Bus for Kivalina, AK: The Consequences of Climate Change
On November 9, 2022, the children of Kivalina, a small Inupiaq village on the coast of the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean in Western Alaska, rode a bus to school for the first time ever. There has never been a school bus in the village of Kivalina, a community of about four hundred people where a person can walk the entire length of the village in about 15 minutes. In fact, there’s never been a bus of any kind! For the village’s entire history, no one could have imagined Kivalina would ever need a school bus. But then the loss of sea ice and increased storm activity on the Chukchi Sea–both the result of climate change, increased coastal erosion and the village began to be washed into the sea.