Three decades after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Alaska’s coast faces an even bigger threat

The tragedy of that coastal Alaska paradise is only deepening as it enters another, even darker act.Changes brought by human emissions of carbon dioxide — warming and acidifying ocean waters — have proved as destructive as the spill, and they will not disperse, as the oil eventually did.A rich, complex community of life established on these shores after ice receded 10 millennia ago. It probably takes a period of stability that long for the relationships of a many-channeled food web to develop. At my life’s halfway point, I’ve watched this place long enough to see how human errors and appetites could break its system of life, and to feel the urgency of addressing the carbon crisis, which I believe will happen. But the dream of recovery, climate stability and a newly healthy ecosystem — that vision may lie beyond the horizon of living generations.