climate commission nears the end

The Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission, which was created by the Legislature in 2006 and for a long time carried the torch on climate change for the whole state, will finish its final report some time next week and, for all intents and purposes, start closing up shop.
The group was supposed to have its report done by Friday, but early next week is more likely, in large part because of the scope of the work involved. Expect to see both a compilation of climate-related impacts already happening and some recommendations for how to proceed. Don't expect anything in the way of mitigating climate change -- reducing emissions, embracing alternative energy, or anything else. The commission made it clear from the start that it wasn't going to consider what was causing the changes, and it looks like it will stick to its promise despite the fact that much if not most of the public and expert testimony included calls for mitigation measures.
Whatever its final product -- and whatever the limits of its approach -- the commission has done an incredible thing. By providing the only statewide, public forum on the issue for the last year, the commission has allowed a compilation of public testimony on everything from permafrost depth to changing saltwater fish. Testimony has come from PhD. scientists and commercial fishermen, hunters and whalers, students and local officials. It's come with the backing of decades of formal research or as the observations of laypeople affected by the changes. And it's come from people in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau, Kotzebue, Barrow, and places in between.
The legacy of the commission likely will not be the recommendations that come from it, but the body of evidence that it gathered, which is dutifully, wonderfully public. The commission's Web site has Powerpoint presentations given by experts, documents and reports, and audio files of public testimony given by hundreds of Alaskans (I'm guessing here, but it must be at least 200).
When the commission ends, its duties will de facto fall to the governor's sub-cabinet on climate change, which is already well underway and which even some commissioners argued was the better vehicle for action on the issue.
P.S. The forming resolution states that the commission will be available for legislative hearings on its report and recommendations, and that continuing the commission will be reevaluated during this legislative session, so it might not be closing up shop just yet...