"Imagine a world without snow." The winter sports industry can and is organizing to change that vision.
On Tuesday, April 8, I attended an event on the subject of the future of snow for the students of MIT's Sloan School of Business. The speakers were Porter Fox, editor of the skiing magazine Powder and author of Deep: the Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow, more at http://www.deepthebook.com; Auden Schendler, a sustainability person for the ski areas in Aspen, CO, the first ski areas to consider climate change as part of their business planning, and the author of Getting Green Done, more at http://www.gettinggreendone.com; and member of the US Olympic Cross-country Ski Team Andy Newell who circulated a petition among winter sports athletes urging world politicians and policy-makers to take action on climate change (http://www.change.org/...).
They are all members of Protect Our Winters (http://www.protectourwinters.org) which is the winter sports industry's and enthusiasts' organization lobbying for climate change policies which will, literally, protect winter. According to their estimates, 50% of the ski resorts in the Northeast and 75% of the European Alps' ski resorts could be out of business by 2100. These resorts would not be able to sustain the 100 days per season they need to survive. Already, some areas are feeling the squeeze as the Alps are warming three times faster than the world average.
As a business constituency, an industry that depends upon winter and snow and the regular progression of the seasons, the winter sports community is eminently qualified to counter-balance some of the business propaganda against doing anything about climate change.
They are asking people to take the POW7 Pledge (http://protectourwinters.org/...), 7 actions that people can take:
get political
educate yourself
find your biggest lever
get vocal
talk to businesses
change your life and save money
join POW
In conversation with Auden Schendler, I was happy to let him know about an organization he was not familiar with, Mothers Out Front (http://www.mothersoutfront.org), one of whose founders is Kelsey Wirth, the daughter of Tim Wirth, a former US Senator from CO, a solid connection. I was even happier when I brought up the work of Allan Savory and his ideas about Holistic Management, a grazing practice which restores grasslands rather than degrades it, and Schendler told me he had just been speaking with a friend about the subject.
Allies are everywhere, if you look for them