Recent stories on CNN.com and in the LA Times paint heart wrenching scenes on the plight of many families in rural Alaska this winter.
The coldest winter in five years brought an early freeze to rivers used to ship fuel and other supplies to remote areas. More fuel than usual had to be shipped by air, making it even more expensive than usual. Some Alaskans are paying $1,500 a month just to keep their homes warm.
For communities that live on what they can gather or hunt, the scarcity of fuel hits hard because it limits their ability to use snowmobiles to go to where they can get food. One family with children reported that there had been no food in the house for three days. The children were surviving on their school's lunch program.
CNN reporter Mallory Simon quoted one rural resident as saying, "The life out here has always been hard, it's just that its a lot harder now."
A major goal of the Bering Strait Project is to provide a way for native communities in remote areas of Alaska, Canada and eastern Siberia to access affordable energy, health care and job training. Building surface transportation infrastructure that connects New York and Chicago to Moscow and Beijing across the Bering Strait would easily bring these benefits and more to the people living along the route.
David M. Rubenstein, a co-founder of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, recently advised Native Americans, including Native Alaskans, that they should lobby the Congress for a program in the pattern of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Western Europe following World War II.
Speaking to a meeting of Native American leaders on the day before President Obama's inauguration, Mr. Rubenstein said that the economic stimulus, which was then in its formative stage, represented a unique opportunity to receive federal assistance.
"There is never going to be another opportunity where you can get so much money so relatively easily as you are going to have in this stimulus package," Mr. Rubenstein said. His advice was for members of his audience to go to Congress and lobby hard to see that their communities benefited from the legislation being crafted at that time.
The stimulus bill, now called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is meant to stimulate the economy of the entire country. Lobbying for spending in remote communities on the basis that this is going to help stimulate the national economy may be a hard sell. Yet, it is clear that these communities urgently need the attention of the nation at large.
In addition to meeting urgent immediate needs, a more long term impact in serving rural Alaska communities would be for the United States to set a national goal that, working together with Canada and Russia, it will build surface transportation infrastructure connecting metropolitan areas of North America to those in Asia and Europe. This would be a project to benefit local communities, the countries involved, and the global community at large.
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