Kicking off his Alaska tour, President Obama is scheduled to talk about climate change, oil and the Arctic later tonight at an ambitiously titled Anchorage event — the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience.
As I wrote yesterday, while the United States this year rotated into its two-year stint leading the eight-nation Arctic Council, this meeting is an unrelated informal session, organized by the State Department and other agencies around a distinctly uncontroversial agenda, ranging from basic science to energy-efficient cold-weather design tips.
You can watch his talk and a live stream of other speeches here:
Follow @USArctic on Twitter.
My previous post examined the complexities of Arctic diplomacy in a changing climate and the Obama administration’s tough effort to balance conflicting energy and climate policies.
Of course, much “Instanet” media coverage at the moment — inevitably oriented toward politics — is focusing on Republican attacks over the president’s totally sensible decision to change the name of Mount McKinley to Denali (as my 17-year-old son noted an hour ago, there’s no fight over the name of the surrounding Denali National Park).
The other focal point, more legitimately, is Obama’s challenge in trying to justify expanding offshore oil drilling in Arctic waters as he pushes a domestic climate plan and climate treaty pledge aimed away from fossil fuels.(Yesterday’s piece has a long section on that and there’s much more on Dot Earth here.)
Oh, and then there’s the pop culture angle.
As with past presidential appearances on “Mythbusters and “Between Two Ferns,” and in events with Nascar drivers and more, the White House has found a seemingly safe entertainment angle in the Alaska trip that is likely to get far more attention than the wonky conference.
I added this postscript to yesterday’s piece but it’s a better fit here:
I’m not sure why President Obama has to go to Alaska to get a primer on wilderness survival skills given how wild Washington politics has become. But, as Dave Itzkoff reported on ArtsBeat this morning, that’s going to happen this week when the president tapes a segment for NBC’s “Running Wild With Bear Grylls“:
Mr. Obama, who is traveling to Alaska this week, will meet with Mr. Grylls, the outdoor adventurer and TV host, “to observe the effects of climate change on the area.” The [NBC] statement said that the two men “will then come together in the Alaskan Wilderness,” adding, “President Obama will become the first U.S. president to receive a crash course in survival techniques from Bear Grylls.”
The skills may come in handy back inside the Beltway, too.
Given that I’m teaching a course this fall on multi-platform communication and I’m pretty bad at Photoshop, I had to try, at least, to create a piece of art, given the established norms for “ fair use” of photography, to envision what this might be like.
A reader alerted me that the native name of Mount McKinley is simply Denali -- not Mount Denali.