The author says, "my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents." So, yes, Porter, human beings are altering the climate- and my bet is that you've been to, or across, each or at least most of these five continents a lot more than one time. You were fortunate, I guess, to have gotten in line early in this story. My hope is that you and others such as yourself will join those of us who are considering paring back their travel plans in light of their carbon impacts, or at least attempting to ameliorate them with a lot of donations to carbon-neutralizing efforts.
248
@artikhan
Bingo! The real price of addressing climate change will cause all of us pain. When it starts to hurt, then we will know we are finally doing something about it.
42
@artikhan
Couldn't agree more! The irony of Porter Fox beginning an article on climate change with "My passion for the port has taken me to five continents". Why is the author's passion worthy of this level of carbon usage? Does he not realize he's a big part of the problem, the wealthy believing they deserve to fly to remote spots for the experience?
47
Long story that manages to ignore your travel to 5 continents chasing powder has far more impact than my truck used to forage firewood to heat my Yukon home.
The 1%ers will always find forgiveness by purchasing carbon credits or by paying an environmental group to go plant a tree. This allows them to sleep well at night and probably can even be deducted at tax time.
Meanwhile in Canada, the mayor of Whistler thinks we should sue oil company executives for their part in global warming while ignoring the millions or billions of Airlines flown annually to their mountain resorts. My guess is many of these same guests can afford the outrageous cost of Whistler only because they are oil executives.
Your thinking is exactly why global warming will never be tackled as it should be.........too many hypocrites.
36
“We don’t use ‘doom and gloom’ or ‘sky is falling’ messaging.”
The sky is falling on your whole industry. Rain at 9000 feet in January? That week felt to me like the doom and gloom is already here.
Can this business save itself? Not through politesse. Not through playing nice with deniers. Times are getting desperate. Time to start telling it like it is.
14
This article seems to be written under the delusion that somebody who believes in climate change, but who is indifferent to all the other terrible effects of global warming, will change their mind because they need to go to a different ski resort.
14
"my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents."
By, um, FLYING??? Maybe that causes a lot of greenhouse gases which have an impact.... I dunno....
Of course I wouldn't suggest that the rich cut back on their flying. Or anyone for that matter. Hopping into a plane is just as natural as jumping into your SUV for so many people. But let's all moan and groan about climate change while we're up there, shall we?
18
Why can't "rich people" do anything -- except make money and hire a few people here and there. If you mean bona fide "rich people" and not merely affluent people.
Most rich people believe that making money and employing a few people here and there is their grand contribution to civilization. Everything else is up to the rest of us, in their view.
10
In another life Iwas a big skier until a neurological issue stopped it. Years ago all of us, two boys - both skiers and my wife skied in Grindalwald for a week. I will never forget the first trip up the mountain in a funicular, which ran all year round by the way, and the top was packed with people, more than the Little Nell and the feel, well it was not the trendy rich who were there. It is conundrum here in in AmeriKa, our belief that we are a classless society, but if you look around, class is deeply entrenched, after 40+ years of Republican neo-liberal shenanigans. And it is only getting worse.
8
Have you ever seen a vehicle with ski racks/Yakima boxes that is not a behemoth, gas guzzling SUV or pick-up? This in itself is part of the problem. The sight alone of the carved out slopes on a mountain's face is environmentally questionable. Skiing is a dying activity here in the US, good riddance.
16
Actually, I am more concerned about vanishing insect-- fireflies, butterflies, even grasshoppers! and birds than vanishing ski resorts.. However, I am concerned about vanishing snow-- which supplies much of our water for personal and agricultural uses.
Solutions; Oh no, here we go again.. Depopulation -- fewer people born. (I don't really approve of war as a means of controlling population.) Oh no. Dare she say it. Birth control in as many forms as possible: I would like an aerosol spray...
Yup, in the end that is the solution.
Meantime, less is more. Turn off all anything not used possibly including your cable box-- what a bore that is. Notice that no cable company ever discusses the energy costs of that piece of equipment. And get a small energy efficient fridge. Thermostat down in the winter -- below 70 -- and up in the summer above 78 or not atl all -- I like fans.
Carbon taxes would mostly effect everyone. (Long demonstrated that the only fair tax is the income tax and probably the luxury tax, no longer discussed by economists -- do they all have the $$ to buy super expensive and unnecessary things?)
So far as the carbon tax mentioned.
Yippee -- another layer of bureaucracy -- which we all pay for and then perhaps we get a penny back?? Sort of like the American medical system with all of its middle men -- the insurance companies that can afford to pay newly hatched lawyers over 100$K a year to disallow claims!! or something else of great merit.
6
Gee, I had no idea that climate change was actually hurting the ski industry.. I guess I’ll change my ways and buy and turn in the SUV and buy a Prius.
2
Short term profits over long term viability, who is really surprised?
6
We all live in a state of denial. I stopped skiing a few years ago. Although mounting injuries and the increasing cost of the sport were significant factors, I was most motivated by the environmental impacts of skiing. The destruction of forest, often on National Forest property, the heavy consumption of water, and overall urbanization and pollution of mountain valleys were costs that became unacceptable to me. That so many skiers fail to see or fail to care about these undeniable facts shows me that it is no surprise that neither skiers nor the resorts address climate change seriously.
21
Please. Global warming is not going to be stopped by skiers. And global warming is itself just a part of the wholesale changes effected by human planetary domination, including massive resource extraction, fishing out the oceans, burning rainforests and eradicating any number of species. In 40 years there will be around 40% more people on the planet and the human juggernaut will be even bigger.
There is a massive gulf between the palliative measures of (fake) carbon sustainability and what really needs to be done.
12
Brian Fairbank of Jiminy Peak in Massachussets:
"Fairbank is also recognized as a ski industry pioneer in green energy and sustainability. In 2007, he drew national acclaim when Jiminy Peak installed a 1.5 megawatt wind turbine -- and was recognized by NSAA when Jiminy Peak received the Golden Eagle Award for sustainability in 2008. In 2016, the Fairbank Group constructed a 2.3MW solar facility, leading to Jiminy's 100 percent usage of renewable energy."
These actions should be a legal requirement for every ski resort, especially in the Northeast, few of which would exist without the extensive snowmaking required for operation.
9
Calling rich people "the rich" is wrong for the purpose of understanding their thinking.
There is no threshold that determines when one is rich, reaching some imaginary financial independence nirvana of the happy people.
It's all in the eye of the beholder, and there is a lot of envy, pettiness, materialistic superficiality and hedonism among multi-millionaires, especially among those with inherited wealth.
People who fly first class to Europe on a holiday may feel bad when others in their (aspired) circle are flying private.
Inviting friends to dinner in a somewhat small ski resort cabin or driving the previous model BMW might be an embarrassment. Having a small boat. Etc.
For many of them, all they see is that they need more money and lots of it. Higher taxes i.e. giving back without a transaction of lavish praise and gratitude, or without gaining social prestige in their charity circle etc. is the last thing they want. To many if not most, struggles of the lower middle class and poor or problems with climate and the environment are abstract problems, not theirs to help solve.
9
A characteristic of climate change is that it moves in slow motion, as compared with our lives. Much of the warming that has occurred over the past 30 years (as pictured in the charts), was set in motion over the past 150 years. Our actions over the next 20 years will have little influence on snow levels during our lives. They may influence the future, but the arc bends slowly. We respond to things that influence our lives, our children's lives, our grandchildren's lives. After that...not so much.
9
Climate change in the Sierra has changed the pattern of snowfall so that we no longer get a line of average years punctuated by a heavy season or two here and a dry year or two there.
Now it seems like every year, it's either another drought, or another year of massive storms, canceled flights and closed roads. Neither extreme is good for the resort economy.
And last year I skied in the rain at 9000 feet in January. Never seen rain at 9000 feet in January before in my life.
I don't know what to do on my own other than drive a hybrid to the mountains and vote Democrat and retweet climate activists on Twitter. I'm really open to finding more things I can do.
That snow is the water storage for our state. It brings skiers and boarders joy, but its value far exceeds that. Just ask a farmer down in the flatlands.
9
Kinda funny story to read during a week when the High Sierra is getting pounded with fresh snow - with more than 10 feet expected in many spots. I'm an avid skier who 100% accepts that people are responsible for climate change. Most skiers I know feel similarly. Sign me up for membership in a new Outdoor Sports Association (OSA) to take on the Luddite crowd of climate change deniers.
11
@SnowTrufflePig. Perhaps you can tell us how the last Ice Age ended. Hint: it probably wasn’t due to cars or people.
5
The average skier doesn't actually notice these changes. If you go skiing for a couple days in February, chances are the conditions are more or less the same each year, you don't actually notice significant changes such as the shortening of the season, diminished average overall snowfall, etc. So the threat of climate change isn't in your face.
Couple that with the fact that many people view climate change as inevitable. It is so much larger than any one industry, or even country. The problem just seems completely intractable and that feeling leads to apathy.
Personally, I'm extremely concerned about global warming. At this point, I'd support measures to force deep reductions in greenhouse gases by any means necessary. I'm calling for a $15/gallon tax on gasoline. $10,000/metric ton price on carbon. Cut military funding in half and invest $350 billion per year in the development of renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiencies. Place a $500/ticket tax on plane tickets. $50 million tax on private jets. My campaign kicks off today!
15
Why can't poor people save the planet by using birth control instead of breeding 5 to 10 offspring?
21
Show a picture from the same spot today.
3
Nice try, Mr. Fox, but this article is about the most clueless, and callous, take on why and how we should pay attention to climate change. Maybe you should have trod the southern border instead of the northern one for some real compassion and answers. Your description of your li'l apres ski conversation with the Bolivian farmer has me nauseated. That's where I'll leave it on my views concerning your advocacy. Suffice it to say, you and your rad skiing breddren are a big part of the problem we now face as a society.
4
You might want to start by recognizing that the real cause of climate change is not fossil fuel energy or greenhouse gases, it is Geoengineering, and it is a deliberate, organized agenda to manipulate the earth's climate for the benefit of certain elements of society. Start by researching HAARP.
2
Me. Porter, I believe that you misused the word, “recalcitrance”.I might be wrong, but please check!
1
My personal take on all this is that the RICH, who ever they are, will buy lavish yachts as their base and cruise around on the rising sea levels and figure out how to take advantage of the situation. Call me cynical. I am thinking of moving further north from Vermont, the Canadian border is one hour away. VT's climate is forcast to be like Southern Virginia and I vowed never to live south of the Mason-Dixon Line, metaphorically speaking.
6
@Steve Beck. You realize they can’t even accurately predict the next day’s weather, right? So forecasting Vermont’s climate is absurd.
1
@Steve Beck. So you think Canada isn’t affected by climate change?
1
Begging billionaires to stop strip mining the worlds wealth and resources is a fools errand. It is time to rise up against the pharoah's of our age.
9
Yes all you ski folks spend run around the world in planes dumping tons and tons carbon into the atmosphere so you can play your little reindeer games.
7
While children are dying in Yemen, you are worrying about snow on ski slopes?
6
Why can't Midwesterners and Southerners -- yes, and our Upstate New Yorkers -- save winter by not voting imbeciles like Donald Trump and other GOP anti-science types to political office?
8
Non-skiers don't care.
3
I live east of the Cascades in Washington state. Sometime back I was in line at the grocery store behind a couple of good ol' boys discussing global warming. One of them lamented, "So it warms up a couple of degrees. Big deal."
I replied that at 30 degrees you're riding your snow machines and ice fishing. At 33 you're living in Tacoma.
They looked at me like I was a ghost, turned away and kept whining about government and liberals in Seattle.
9
Because they love golf more?
4
Vote where you ski.
1
Rich people helping the world? Perish the thought
6
time to bus 'em in and ban the fat gas guzzlers (in your dreams)
4
C'mon, Porter. It's Sierra Nevada. No "s"
4
The cover photo shows a mountain top in Squaw Valley, California during the 2015 drought. The next year the drought ended with rivers of rain and snow.
Though the author ironically laments the failure of the wealthy to fight for ecological renewal and environmental stewardship, the cover picture even more ironically reveals something we cannot talk about: geo-engineering, a secret government program to control weather and contain heat build up on earth, or so some claim.
The cover picture shows long smoky trails, plumes that don't match natural cloud formations; we are supposed to accept these man-made plumes as "natural" emanations from a jet plane, called condensation trails. But they don't evaporate, they only disperse.
While we strive to correct global warming, it would help that the government doesn't keep its aerial spraying program a secret so we can evaluate the impact of the spraying on the environment.
2
Where do you live? How did you get to Bolivia, and the "dozens of resorts in the United State, Canada and Europe." That's some hefty transportation carbon footprint you left behind.
11
Skiing is a lifestyle choice for me and many of my peers who moved to Vail to work and ski. In the 70’s we were called ski bums. Today more and more people are coming here to live and work and raise there children here. Our homes are here and our livelihoods depend on our guests coming here to enjoy skiing and and the beauty and natural wonders of the mountains all year long. You can go on and on about the “rich people” ruining everything but this is a tourist economy that depends on people coming here for all four seasons. In the summer we depend on water that runs off the mountains into our rivers to support rafting and fishing. Our wildlife depend on water and a positive climate as well. We are not safe from wildfires if we don’t have snow and the forest becomes dry. We need water of course for our everyday lives. Please stop the blame game and get out and vote. Vote for the people who care about the mountains and the the lifestyle that so many Coloradans enjoy and the people that visit here enjoy and love. My parents gave me the gift of skiing and I chose to raise my children here. I can only hope that my grandchildren receive that same gift and pass it on to future generations. Climate change is real but we as a country can work to fix it. It’s not just for the ski industry. It’s for all Americans who like to be outside and for all the future generations.
Vote for politicians who want to help this cause.
10
People continue to view climate change with a microscope. A snow pack problem or a butterfly's range is changing. It is hard to step back and see the forest through the trees. When you really look at what is happening around us, whining about not getting a few extra days on the skill hill is like complaining about a hang nail and not seeing the infection from it has reached your groin and is gangrenous. I hear celebrities and newscasters talk about sea levels rising 100 feet. We don't have to worry about that. Before sea levels rise that far there will be catastrophic failures of the ecosystems that produce global food supplies and even oxygen supplies. We don't need some rich people leading the way with fund raisers. We need our global consumption driven economy to either change radically and quickly or we should just plan on finishing our turn on this planet. You cannot ski when there is no food to eat or oxygen to breath.
11
The Ski industry is a disaster for the climate, but I’ll cut to the chase.
Either scientists perfect fusion energy (not fission energy), or Mother Nature unleashes a plague to cull half the human population on our blue planet.
Barring those two developments, humans are doomed.
7
I'll try to provide some insight for you. All of the science related to climate has been polluted by politics, primarily from the left and their allies (like the NYT). In any valid research study, the researcher and subject are blinded to prevent bias. Studies funded by interested parties - for example a study of autism by a pharmaceutical company - are viewed with skepticism.
Climate 'science' is not science at all. Any scientist who dares to challenge liberal orthodoxy is mocked and ostracized. On the flip side, the surest way to get funding is to report what the media wants to hear - which is anything that will ultimately further leftist causes or politicians.
Does mankind impact the planet? Surely - mostly by creating ways for species to invade new territories, upsetting the balance created by millions of years of evolution.
The planet may be warming too, depending on where one looks... but climate and temperature have ALWAYS varied over decades. Public schools have convinced our young that every storm is a new phenomenon. AOC recently described the 3000 deaths from last year's hurricane to climate change, when actually we have had a relative dearth of severe storms. Storms do more damage now that fools have built up our coasts, not because of the nature of the storms. We will eventually go back to normal hurricane seasons - and the NYT will surely blame climate change!
You'll continue efforts to block the real science - and that's a shame.
6
@not bitter Climate changes over millions of years, weather over decades. But didn't those Exxon scientists in the 60s know what fossil fuels were doing to CO2 concentrations. I think those are the scientists you are referring to as opposing liberal orthodoxy, in effect they advocated concealing it. Climate change no matter how you define it and no matter what side you are on will happen regardless of what anyone believes in.
8
@not bitter
When Svante Arrhenius predicted global warming over 100 years ago or Eunice Foote over 150 years ago, was that all about politics?
Hansen and Broecker had no political agenda back in the 70s and 80s either when climate science advanced.
And Exxon certainly did not have a left leaning political agenda when their scientists came to the same conclusions as Hansen and others.
7
Actually, the ski season is being extended throughout the US. Don’t let facts get in the way though
6
"Can't" has nothing to do with it. The proper word is "won't."
The people who deny climate change, who will not lift a finger to address it, are the people who make the most money from the status quo.
3
Ski resort owners are more interested in selling giant homes around the resorts --skiing is an after thought. They just need snow long enough to sell off their giant homes. After that, the poor suckers who bought them will be left holding the bag without winter sports.
8
Adequate taxation of the very rich so that there are no longer any uber-rich in favor of an tempered capitalism is just the beginning of the solution.
The next step is to significantly reinvent the Republican Party so that Mafia Central is completely excised from the very core of its operating methodology in favor of a true partner to the Democrats in forming a Green New Deal to lead the world away from climate catastrophe.
Part of the sea change of the Republican Party would have to include a fundamental revision of Evangelical Christian leanings.
The hope for the above lies in the young people who want to call themselves Republicans but cannot tolerate the old white men who have fully wrecked Lincoln's Party starting, lets say, around 1982.
7
Why should they care? This will just make viable ski resorts even more exclusive and that's the point isn't it?
2
The koch bothers are a convenient, and perhaps overused symbol, of what is evil about the current monopoly/trust economy that has made them, and others, billionaires. As long as they get to value the oil reserves they own that are in the ground untapped at book value they remain among the richest people on the planet. That is why they aren't enthusiastic about emerging alternatives to oil and gas.
We need to recognize the evil of allowing people such as they to continue to buy politicians who will let the planet die to keep these people rich beyond any measure of what they need.
6
There's always someplace in the world where you can ski. The rich will just go there.
3
We are at an amazing tipping point in the energy equation for all 196 countries of the world. Optimized gravity batteries by
Energy Vault (see www.energyvault.ch) combined with solar and wind energy are now LESS expensive than any other form of energy, including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear....and they work 100% of the time in 100% of the world. So, we have the tools to save the snow. We just need to speed the adoption of the cheapest form of energy which is renewables+gravity batteries. Welcome to the revolution!
3
Porter Fox says,
"I’ve been a skier for 45 years, and my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents. I’ve skied remote places, like the Cordillera Real in Bolivia, where a farmer at the base of a 16,000-foot peak I had just climbed and skied told me his village was relocating because the glacier no longer provided enough water. I’ve hiked and skied at New England resorts that have closed because of a lack of snow and money for snow-making. And I’ve visited dozens of resorts in the United States, Canada and Europe where the wealthy and not-so-wealthy gather — and where snowpacks are shrinking."
Porter, with all that traveling, I wonder, what is the size of your carbon footprint?
Perhaps, if you love skiing, you should move to a ski mountain and write you opinion columns from there.
7
Downhill skiing is hardly a green sport and never has been. From resorts in beautiful places used as tax havens such as Jackson, WY, with rarely used huge houses like the Cheney's surrounded by endless fencing that blocks wildlife movements to both Sun and Deer Valleys owned by the Holding family whose fortune comes from Sinclair Petroleum. All on federal land on sweetheart long-term leases. That's just a couple.
Looking for movement or leadership on climate change? Look elsewhere. Because the customers and ski bums really don't count, just the 1% resort owners and the gutless federal government.
11
I used to live within an hour's drive of Colorado ski resorts. I used to ski. But I gave up skiing when the soaring price of lift tickets combined with 5-hour traffic jams on the I-70 drive home became unbearable. All those idling exhaust fumes contribute to global warming and shrinking snowpacks that so distress the likes of Mr. Fox.
6
Wow, what an oddly daring piece to write and to publish...maybe. On the personal side, skiing started when I was 4 and effectively ended when I was 40...from 2-turn hills with a rope tow run out of a VW on blocks, to racing and deep powder at over 13000’...from the most intimate and communal connections with Nature to the surest dead end where people, speed, and conspicuous consumption have all but killed it. For me there’s never been a single regret, even when I marvel at Mikaela Shiffrin. She, Vonn and Bode Miller (just imagine) could do so much to build awareness, but why would they?...”Kittens fixated on lasers.”
4
The rich skiers are now threading their way through ski areas getting narrower and shorter seasons. The rich could'nt care less until they have to hang up their designer skis in their garages. Of course, by then it'll be too late. It already is.
4
The rich (that includes you and me) are the ones responsible for the lack of snow. Global warming is caused by the use of fossil fuels.
5
Ah yes, "rich people".
Why not invest all responsibility and authority with "rich people"?
Oh wait, we already did ...
2
How could you miss mentioning Taos Ski Valley, the world's first and only B Corp ski resort, owned by billionaire conservationist Louis Bacon?
2
Isn't their a private Ski mountain in Wyoming that caters to
the oligarch's?
1
Isn’t the problem that ski resorts are reluctant to admit that a lift ticket buys you less good skiing than it used to?
3
Humanity is the problem! There are too many of us and we are still breeding like flies. Stop this insanity, 7 billion humans are too many for this planet to support. It was a grand experiment creating humans but it was way to successful.
5
Good article
It’s over and nothing will stop the ravages of global warming - nothing but huge depopulation
But - it’s good to see the affects hitting those in power as a wake up call ( despite pressing the snooze button)
Also - those luxury resorts in the Caribbean have lost most corral and scuba diving is akin to looking at a tomb
Too bad the inept Democratic Party can’t harness this
They could have won over the hunting crowd decades ago who should be an excellent bridge from industrialists to naturalists to save the environment - instead Democrat’s are “Deer in headlights” against the dumb job vs environment debate.
At least I don’t ski, so this is one less thing global warming will take away from my kids (from an already huge list like birds, insects, and coasts)
2
The rich only care about themselves. They represent what is wrong with the human species.
3
If I was truly rich I would build housing that would have extreme thermal efficiency. One can change the entire housing market from drywall palaces that leak energy like a sieve to an alternative. And what’s up with the southwest of America, why are they not exploiting solar energy and still burning coal. You guys live in the desert, buy some solar panels for Christ’s sake. The rich are just idiots with money, usually inherited.
4
It's shocking how US government representatives in states where snow protection is critical are doing nothing about it. Thankfully the New York Times has exposed their voting records on environmental issues. It is up to residents of those state to do something about it in the next elections. The planet can no longer afford to have lame duck politicians when it comes to climate change.
2
Those that operate ski resorts need to also need to take a look at the growing popularity uphill skiing, specially what Aspen Skiing Company has done for the sport. With their 4 resorts in the Roraing Fork Valley and nearby Sunlight one can ski uphill to earn their turns right at the resort. This results in lesser energy use and a chance for skiers to gain some fitness as well. More resorts should look at this option and many will be glad to pay for their use at the resort. Skinning up simple groomers such as at Buttermilk’s Tiehack area reduce the terrain skiers cover while they still get to enjoy the outdoors. If you wake up early you can visit Ajax or Highlands bowl for more challenging terrain. New Mexico’s Ski Santa Fe can ski like a big mountain if you want to earn your turns. Every time I work in SLC I visit Brighton with my skis and it’s become a favorite of mine as the side country there is amazing. 2 seasons ago I had 130+ days all without buying a lift ticket. I’d gladly contribute my fair share to other resorts for a chance to ski uphill. A solution is there and it goes right back to Ski history.
3
NO ONE is stopping climate change.....it’s what the planet does and has been doing for millennia.
It’s the natural order of things.....it’s not good and it’s not bad.....it just IS.
2
Interesting article in Harper's Magazine showing how the outdoor recreation industry in the Mountain States is growing beyond revenues of mining, logging and agriculture in some places.
https://harpers.org/archive/2017/08/political-climbers/
Combine with the well-paid urban residents in mountain cities, who moved there because they they could get jobs near the outdoors lifestyle they love, and you get political change. Slowly, but it should be noticed.
I'm hoping that these forces will start inflicting damage on a Republican orthodoxy that is funded to prop up the dying fossil fuel industry, despite the multiple harms those products cause, and despite the existence of replacement technologies.
We need both parties working on decarbonizing the economy, and I beg the Republican Party to stop being the party of stupid on these topics.
Republican voters, please read the following about the positive impact of wind energy on rural, agricultural areas. Wake up your elected officials and tell them to stop resisting things that help you.
One quote: "The money that Richard Wilson earns from leasing his land for about 35 turbines run by the Golden West Wind Energy Center outside Colorado Springs, Colorado, has kept him from having to sell off pieces of the 6,000-acre cattle and wheat ranch his family has owned since 1948."
https://www.omaha.com/money/turning-to-turbines-as-commodity-prices-remain-low-wind-energy/article_2814e2cf-83a3-547d-a09e-f039e935f399.html
1
Chinese and Indian rich people aren't skiers.
4
... Because money doesn't come with a moral compass.
3
Because the rich are the engines of climate change.
2
Porter Fox writes,
"I’ve been a skier for 45 years, and my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents. I’ve skied remote places, like the Cordillera Real in Bolivia, where a farmer at the base of a 16,000-foot peak I had just climbed and skied told me his village was relocating because the glacier no longer provided enough water. I’ve hiked and skied at New England resorts that have closed because of a lack of snow and money for snow-making. And I’ve visited dozens of resorts in the United States, Canada and Europe where the wealthy and not-so-wealthy gather — and where snowpacks are shrinking."
Porter, since your carbon footprint is so enormous, why don't you move to a ski mountain and stay, thereby helping to protect the sport you say you love?
2
The intense heat of last summer made it super windy and intensely hot. It reduced sailing, swimming and gardening time. This was an immence change from 15 years ago when l moved to be by the sea. We never used the A/C until last year..
3
Honestly, this 'news' piece read like an article from the Onion. The guy not only travels in carbon fiber tubes spewing burning tons of fuel to create the multiple of three tons of CO2 - to ski? Not to mention the guy obviously enjoys travel during the off season. Does he not realize the industrial infrastructure necessary to create these fantastic flying machines. If a planet of 7 billion and rising wants to recreate the carbon footprint of 1850 (1.5 billion in population) the mode of travel must revert to the beautiful clipper ships of old. And by the way adenine filled ski sports were unheard of back then. Get a grip.
3
Saying that temps have gone up by over 2 degrees F is a little bit of misrepresentation. You need a much bigger context, such as the trend for the area (mid southern CO) since 1895:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/divisional/time-series/0505/tavg/12/10/1895-2018?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1895&lastbaseyear=2000&trend=true&trend_base=10&firsttrendyear=1895&lasttrendyear=2018
Overall you have an increase that averages 1 degree F per decade. But note a few things:
1) there is no increase in avg temps until 2000, which is a very short period of time from a climate perspective
2) while there has a been a recent increase in avg temps, from 1934 through the early 70's a decline in temps nearly as steep.
3) The highest avg temp in this portion of CO was in 1934.
4) The charts shows cyclicality so it's hard to attribute the changes in temps to an overall warming trend -- let alone man caused.
5) The biggest driver of the slight elevation in overall temps is higher minimums, not higher max temps.
6) The highest min temp for the winter was in 1906
7) avg min temps 1895 -2018 for the 6 winter months (nov -april) are 12.5 F, the highest min is 18 F --
This data all come from NOAA. I've also looked at the handful of long term stations in the area using Berkeley Earth -- those that have been in action for 1000 months or more -- for the 8 I found 3 showed a negative temp trend, 5 a slight up trend -- and Berkeley adjusted all the temps up.
Hmmm...
1
@Ralphie
So, in talking about global warming, you select an area that is one out of 344 climate divisions in the US alone and draw conclusions? Your own graph shows a 0.1 F per decade change over the time period century...so, the that one small area of Colorado is still warming...even while the sun has been cooling for five decades. Thermodynamics says that should not happen.
That should be used as a textbook version of cherry picking data and interpreting it incorrectly.
7
traveled to 5 continents to ski? Really? Not the role model I would have expected to author this article. Time to give up your "global entry pass" and walk the talk.....
4
The irony and tone-deafness of this article are the root of the problem. What about the responsibility of the skiers? Transportation, lodging, and consumption are the main problem. When will trains be developed to transport people to all the CO resorts, or CA/NV resorts? How many SUVs does it take to transport families up to their 4000 sq ft homes for a weekend? I've skied all my life. I've watched resorts like Vail, Mammoth, and Squaw devour land and resources. And people mindlessly take part in it. Maybe the solution is to make everyone skin up miles away from a resort, and carry in their own supplies. The resorts won't make any money, but at least those that come worked to get there.
3
As if "the rich" cause climate change... or could arrest it. Mass hysteria is a poor guide to rational responses in personal behavior.
1
You really have to ask that? Rich people only care about spending money on baubles and vanity. They never ever cared one bit about anything else. Americans worship them.
Welcome to mediocrity wrapped in a fake democracy and awful capitalism run wild.
5
Rich people, rich people, rich people. Let's blame it all on the 'rich people'. So easy. And a lot more fun than blaming things on the immigrants. Let's be real here. The planet's population has exploded and will only get exponentially worse. Hard to pin that on the 'rich people'. More people driving, flying, using energy and resources. Look around you on your morning commute. 90% of the cars have one person in them. That's on the rich people, too ? I mean, I get it. Blame the 'rich people', it sells papers. It gets the clicks. Too many people. You want to make a difference ? Quit making more.
2
@sheikyerbouti Human overpopulation is the main cause of global warming/climate change. Rich people usually have few children. So why blame it on the rich? Why blame it on skiers? By the way, I'm not rich nor have I ever gone skiing. The U.S. is grossly overpopulated due to immigration (legal and illegal). The NY Times and many of their commenters must be ignorant/unaware since they ignore the subject of overpopulation both in the U.S. and the world. I guess they like excessive traffic, overdevelopment, loss of wildlife habitat...they just don't care about other species.
2
If protecting the sport of skiing is your reason for fighting climate change, maybe it's best you consider a larger canvas.
2
The earth, and the earth's climate, are dynamic systems.
Nothing - ever - remains static
Therefore, you only have two options:
1) Global warming
2) Global cooling
Pick one
1
It will get worse.
Look at who is now in the White House.
Look at who is now in the Senate.
1
Because most people with common sense know that this is primarily left wing hysteria. We’re gonna be just fine.
2
Like this ridiculous opinion piece, the final few paragraphs show us that this is all about politics. Nobody “denies” climate science, but using data to further certain political agendas and achieve power is what this is all about. Intelligent, independent thinking people know this and will not get suckered in. Nice try though! https://thepointsguy.com/news/ski-season-as-more-co-resorts-open/
1
Free markets are nearsighted.
3
Good story, terrible headline. Winter sports are not just for rich people! Anyone can enjoy snowshoeing, cross-country, sledding or just walking in the snow in public parks.
5
Oh poor Humans! They refuse to stop burning fossil fuels and they refuse to stop eating animals and now they can't have fun in the snow! How do they survive? Hint: they are not going to for very much longer
5
After the seas have risen to swallow much of the world's population, the rich will still be living on high ground that will be unaffordable to everybody else. And still voting Republican.
2
No empathy. You would think the ski crowd would want to preserve their play pens but...who cares, we will just move on to the next confection with little thought of what and where they are. The American upper classes.
Oh I forgot, America is classless!
2
skiing can save the world.
who knew?
1
Significant forward movement that begs mentioning:
In 2016 the National Ski Areas Association endorsed Citizen’s Climate Lobby’s revenue-neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal.
In 2018 it was endorsed by USA Gold Medal Winter Olympian Jessie Diggins: https://youtu.be/O4_IcWgFdIk.
In January that proposal was introduced in Congress—details on HR 763 are at https://energyinnovationact.org.
1
I don't know why people like Scott Tipton even go to Congress; unless they like getting paid to do what they're told. These so-called "leaders" are going to wait until the Golden Goose dies from thirst and, not a mirror in their houses, they'll wait for direction on who to blame.
1
Very interesting cherry-picking of data and the author picked a 2012-2016 time window when a severe drought was happening. It turns out 2017 was one of the wettest and snowiest in record for CA! 2018 snowpack was normal and now early 2019 the Sierra snowpack is above normal. In the meantime, thanks to environmental activists, CA is shutting down the last nuclear power plant in the state and taking away 10% of the state's energy supply that is completely emission free. The ski season is not shrinking and 2017 ski season in Tahoe was going on even in 4th of July! Does NY Times even bother to check facts anymore?
2
@Andy
I am a climate scientist and the cherry picking is indeed egregious here. I am not disputing the premise of the article that snowpack is endangered in the future - all climate projections forecast reductions in snowpack. But the reporting team here has gone to misrepresented trends over the past 40 years. (Note that 1982-96 is also a particularly snowy period.) This kind of reporting is not helpful to the cause of addressing climate change, because it sows doubt about even scientifically sound findings.
3
The reduced snow-pack impacts not only wealthy downhill skiers from the coasts, but normal folks who cross-country, snowobile, and snowshoe. Just as important for many, the lack of water effects the viabitly of commercial herds and where those herds move after winter. Leave it to the Times to falsely (or ignorantly) incite yet another faux class conflict when we are all in this together.
3
Wow, terrific read. As a skier and Montanan, wish you had added Montana’s retrograde climate-denying GOP politicians - Daines, Gianforte, Zinke - to your graphics.
Your article could inspire one to enter the political fray him or herself, because, as you say, the time for full-throated advocacy for CC prevention and mitigation is now.
So how about some P.O.W. backing for a U.S. Senate run against Steve Daines?
2
Anyone who doesn't believe in "doom and gloom" and "sky is falling" messaging with regard to the catastrophic perils of climate change is, well, an idiot for lack of a more articulate term.
I began skiing at age 4 in Bavaria and have, like the author, skied all over the world. I was the captain of my ski team in Colorado during college and skied over 100 days per year back then. The demise of the sport, specifically the ludicrous pricing of a day of skiing today, has moved it far out of the reaches of the masses, which in itself is a tragedy, but in a few decades skiing with oxygen tanks in the Himalyas will be about all that is left to do.
This article was incredibly informative. I would have thought that ski industry executives and lobbyists would be environmentalists at heart. After all, the sport is all about enjoying the great outdoors and getting outside in a season where most stay indoors. All I can say is that these ski industry leades will sorely regret their myopic focus on short term profits when there is nothing left to slip and slide on at all in the winter - and that day is literally right around the corner.
3
Though I am a firm believer in Climate Change, it is interesting that this article cherry picked a particularly wet period in the 80s against a particularly dry period early this decade. The last few years including a record setting 2017 have been incredibly wet and snowy out west. The years before the dry spell were also incredibly wet as well. I have lived here since the early nineties and my observation is that moisture is definitely cyclical.
1
I sent a more detailed comment in earlier - but the actual data from NOAA shows that for the area mentioned -- if you don't cherry pick your start date but instead use the entire available data record -- you'll see that for colorado climate div 5 (the area mentioned) that the avg temps have only increased by .1 F per decade since 1900. Most of that due NOT to higher max temps, but to higher minimums, and the slight increase in minimum temps has been in winter, but the avg temps are still cold cold cold. MOre importantly, the graph shows that temps are cyclical. Recently they've gone up, but in the past (say from the mid 30's to mid 70's) they've declined.
I would suggest that in warmer years or periods, snow cover will decline some, in colder years it will increase. So I'm betting from the mid 30's to the mid 70's the snow cover increased quite a bit.
None of this argues for global warming.
And by the way, I've looked at the data for the 8 long term temp stations in the area that have been around from the late 19th, early 20th century using Berkeley earth for data access. For 3 of the 8, the temperature trend was negative -- the other 5 it trended up slightly. So, temps vary from year to year, sometimes over a longer interval, they trend up or down...
1
@Ralphie
You cherry picked one out of 344 divisions in the US....that is wrong, but it still indicates warming. Way too small an area to be drawing any conclusions about global warming.
"Most of that due NOT to higher max temps, but to higher minimums, and the slight increase in minimum temps has been in winter, but the avg temps are still cold cold cold..."
And that is exactly what climate scientists have predicted. CO2 traps heat at night yielding warmer minimum temps.
Great article, but I can't help but notice that the changes in winter shown so dramatically in graphs and maps have been steadily building for decades.
Yet media such as this were "reporting the controversy" right up to a few years ago. The rich aren't the only ones to be slow to get it. Or maybe it's the same thing, if newspapers are mostly owned by the very rich.
Oh, right...
2
This is a heartening development, if somewhat overdue. As the article relates, people don't ski or hunt, they are skiers, they are hunters. Its who they are, and who they are is just as much at risk in this warmed future as a coral reef is.
Many Republicans in the mountainous West have been horribly misinformed about the dangers of climate change. Along with loss of snow-pack, I would add another: illegal immigration from dried up lands further south. As this animated NASA gif of soil moisture shows, in N America a brown slick of drought is expected to begin in Central America, and travel up through Mexico into the US West and Midwest by 2100. That's drought, but could just as easily be people. Subsistence agriculture pushed off the land by lack of water will migrate on behalf of its children. It's no secret, to any climate scientist anyway, where that water is being pushed as this warmed future becomes our present.
http://assets.climatecentral.org/images/uploads/news/2_12_15_Brian_NASADroughtAnimation.gif
1
"Better late than never." The effort to return to snowpacks of the 1980's with a full out commitment by the global community starting today probably would take until the next century. That effort is made all the harder if you are hobbled by leadership unwilling to take a front and center role. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a president to take up the charge instead of the Commander and Chief Denier we have now.
1
So the world's wealthy should be worried about climate change because their winter activities might be curtailed?
How about the millions of ordinary people globally who are having their lives destroyed by the effects of climate change? Perhaps they have some concern for them, as well?
I doubt it.
2
The article says, "Between 2001 and 2016, low-snow years cost the industry more than $1 billion and 17,400 jobs compared with an average season"
If I understand, that is $66.7 Million a year and 1,160 jobs a year. Not even a rounding error in the economy.
Lets stick with the basic arguments of the harm we are doing to the planet.
1
Rich people can't save winter because there are two billion+ people in India and China who want to be rich (or even just better off). That takes energy.
Sine 1965 CO2 emissions from the Asia Pacific region, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy (Robert Rapier), have increased from less than two billion MT to over 16 billion in 2018. Meanwhile emissions from the US and the European Union peaked at about 10 billion MT in 2007 and have declined since to about 9 billion MT in 2018. Even if the US and Europe had totally eliminated CO2 emissions in 2018, there still would have been more CO2 emissions in 2018 than in 1965!
So the rich people of the US and Europe can't possibly save winter - only the Chinese and Indians can. And good luck with that - the Chinese promised to begin reducing emissions only starting in 2030!
6
I grew up at Copper Mountain, Colorado, and every time I go home, I marvel at all the Escalades, Tahoes, and Tundras idling outside the new Whole Foods in Frisco. If anyone should know better than to flagrantly burn carbon, it should be skiers, and they can afford not to. Every little bit helps. Use your carbon budget for things that have no alternative, like flying (yet). On the ground, get a hybrid.
5
If you shut down ski areas may as do the same with golf courses. Football and baseball stadiums too as everyone drives to the games. Also beaches and resorts, national parks, state parks as everyone drives or flies to them too. No TV or radio or newspapers like this one. I think playing a game of checkers would still be ok though.
6
@baba ganoush
Only if you made the checkers yourself and they weren't shipped to you from China, Viet Nam, India, or Taiwan. LOL. Loved your comment.
2
The emerging strides by the ski industry in addressing global warming are commendable, but considering their minor impact relative to that of the US on the economy, greenhouse gas emissions, and political relevance, these efforts have little national leverage. For one thing, most big ski area visitors come from outside the congressional districts in which the ski areas are located. As the figure of the western ski area districts show, the representatives are conservative republicans who are more concerned about infringements on gun rights, drilling rights and women's right than the entitlements of those out-of-district urban elitists plying their snowy trails.
Apathy towards urgent preventive steps are found in the majority of Americans, even among those who believe in AGW. Global warming has likely produced much of the unusual severity of recent tropical storms, mostly affecting the southern red states. Yet this issue was not on the political radar in 2018, and the same bunch of deniers was largely elected in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas and in between states. It appears that the ski industry has the same MO as the fossil fuel industry, one that only looks at a revenue guarantee over the tear term.
1
Why is the author concerned about saving ski resorts, and not about saving the environment overall ?
He can stay home, and find other winter activities, rather than pointing a finger at others, while it seems that he wants others to ensure that he can continue to fly to multiple continents, on jets which harm the environment whose demise he laments.
3
It's a shame you didn't mention the rise in human powered backcountry skiing/riding in this article, especially because of your contact with POW. A growing portion of the hardcore snow people are ditching lifts/snow machines/snow cats/helicopters in exchange for walking up the mountain with specialized equipment. The main motivations are obviously superior snow quality, solitude and exercise, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a single AT skier or splitboarder who doesn't take pride in their personal carbon footprint reduction because of their non-traditional mountain travel.
2
@Evan
I skinned up at a Vermont resort today, at 7:00 am. Had a nice, untracked run down before the lifts started. Very quiet and peaceful, and only 20 minutes from my home..If my regular touring partner was around, we would have been skiing in the backcountry, far from any ski area.
My light DPS touring skis were made in the USA, but the pin bindings (G3) were made in Taiwan, and assembled in Canada. Scarpa boots made in Italy. So there is still a "carbon footprint" for this hi-tech gear.
2
Some may believe, and not without reason, that greenhouse gas accumulation already has reached a point beyond correction as far as continuous global warming is concerned. In that case, seeking to slow it is like promoting a healthy diet to those on death row.
3
@Penseur - it's more accurate to note that while there's some extra warming built into our future, the amount of it, and the severity and length of the effects, is very much based on stopping emissions and how soon we do that.
3
Hmm. I have a vacation house in vail and frequently fly out for a weekend of skiing. Is vail to lobby for policies that would prevent me from doing so, or are you expecting me to do so? Or is this author arguing that skiers and resorts should lobby for policies that limit CO2, just not policies that limit emissions in connection with the sport? In other words, be hypocrites?
Also, one factory in China puts out more CO2 in a day than a lifetime of my skiing. Keep it in perspective.
3
@DRS So we should just point fingers -- look at China! -- and do nothing?
2
The truth is that even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels today the ski industry would still be doomed. No one is going to 'save' it-Billionare's or not. We should be worried more about being able to grow food and finding clean water. Real problems.
11
I live (and ski) in the Adirondack Park of New York State. Back in 2005, the environmentalists pushed back against Barton Mines installing wind turbines adjacent to the Gore Mt. ski area. The wind project would have supplied enough clean energy to power over half the households in the entire county. Most skiers I know (many are members of NYSEF, New York Ski Education Foundation) were in favor of the project. Bill McKibben (The End of Nature, 1989), who lived locally at the time, was the only environmentalist willing to walk the talk. Seems to me there are many more “environmentalists” than skiers. Plenty of blame to go around.
2
it will snow somewhere, and the rich will have new playgrounds far from the common folk, its natural like that, i saw a movie once where the rich lived in the clouds because the ground was to messy.
1
Given the severe ongoing consequences of climate change in terms of refugees, drought, and social upheaval, this falls in the category of rich peoples' problems. Sure, it is good to point out that climate change may impact an elitist leisure activity, but the real world impact on billions, 99.9% of whom will never be able to even imagine hitting the Alps for vacation, comes across as a bit tone-deaf. The wealthy will always be able to afford to access higher altitudes or latitudes, so this is a trivial issue.
3
@james doohan The author's larger point was that snow is vanishing. Snow is a source of water for a large part of humanity. This is hardly a problem just facing the rich.
2
@Centrist Read again. Loss of ski terrain is trivial. "...refugees, drought, and social upheaval..." are not.
1
Around 2003 or so skiing briefly went away in the Southwest --- Purgatory, Telluride, Wolf Creek, Taos. Warmer weather, rain instead of snow, resorts offered skiers a few runs on inches-deep man-made snow where they used to have tens of feet of base. I briefly hung up my boards. After a few years the snow came back, but never like it was. Due to stumps and rocks we didn't begin skiing @ Wolf Creek till they had 100" of snow -- before. 500-700" seasons were common. Endless powder. Today, February 3, WC has 75" of snow on a mountain spotted with dead trees, victims of drought, beetles, and climate change. Last week's big dump helped WC enormously, (they have long since cleared all the rocks) but we used to get humongous dumps all winter long that made getting up the hill a challenge even in a Subaru. Massive Lake Navajo, which takes in all of that snowmelt, now consists of a couple of creeks at its Northern end. Snowmaking itself is an ecological disaster, running gargantuan diesel engines to compress air and pump water uphill to snow cannons. All the wealth in the world cannot return the snow to the mountains. We, the modern-day Anasazi, will likely disappear when the water runs out, just like our ancestors.
11
The maps showing legislative districts and snow pack is interesting, but does not tell the full story. If you look closer, at the county level in Colorado, you will notice that the counties with major ski resorts (Eagle, Summit, Pitkin, San Miguel) voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2018 governor's race and 2016 presidential election. These are also some of the state's wealthiest counties.
However, the overlying districts representing these areas are red. P.O.W. and other advocacy organizations would be wise to extend the conversation beyond skiers and snowboarders-- to conservationists, ranchers, farmers, hunters and fishers--and build a larger coalition. Additionally, in these districts, the disconnect between the resort and rural communities is often stark and it can be difficult to convey the importance of snow pack and the tourism industry to voters when traditional job drivers, such as resource extraction and agriculture, are declining.
If pure partisan politics could be put aside, I feel that progress could be made on the topic of climate change and the topics discussed in this article. I fear, however, that we have schussed too far down the mountain both in terms of partisanship and global warming to accomplish a great deal on either front in the future.
As a skier, and one that hopes to pass along this passion to my children, I hope that I'm wrong.
1
Maybe some Backcountry skiers are going to be sensitive to the ongoing effects of climate change but the average resort skier doesn't ring any bells in my mind in regards to the environmental issues leading to the reduced snowpack. The sport isn't the quaint rigorous discipline that puts the average against the implacable forces of nature. It's a commoditized product for bored City types. The vast majority of skiers out there are mediocre in fitness, skills, outdoor experience etc etc. They get there in gigantic SUVs with awd or fly. The corporate owners now are increasingly foreign entities with vast sovereign wealth from what....yup sale of fossil fuel. Don't worry about the super rich access to deep snowpack. The lucky few are already buying mountains with some likelihood of twenty plus years or more of snowpack. The rest ....let them ski on cake.
2
We just moved to Northern New Mexico from Florida. This winter, thanks to the shift in the polar jet stream, has delivered a bonanza of snow. So naturally, my kids are doing snow things including skiing. In their case, it's mostly Nordic cross country but even that is clearly demonstrating the enormous expense of skiing. I am thinking, how much can I afford to invest in this expensive sport? Driving, 4wd car, three sets of skis and boots, poles, clothing, hats, gloves, it just goes on and on. Global warming is a tragedy of epic proportion but the loss of skiing doesn't seem to be the most salient part of that tragedy.
3
I can think of several answers to the title question. In no particular order.....
1. The rich genuinely believe climate change is a left-wing fabrication.
2. Most of them are so long steeped in their privileged bubbles that they cannot actually see and evaluate reality.
3. The rich know that so long as there is snow anywhere on the planet, their private jets will get them there and their helicopters will drop them on the slopes.
Short answer, they don't think they have to care.
571
@ridgeguy
This response shows more about your prejudices than what you think it does about the rich. The rich usually are well read. They try to stay ahead of the game by picking up on trends and taking advantage of situations. If you ask the rich if climate change is real, they will say yes. You can see that in how they are starting to change their real estate investments among other things.
14
@ridgeguy
Your #3 is exactly correct. If you have the money you know you can just go wherever conditions are good.
As for the graphic on the lawmakers, it would have been useful to also tell us how much each of them has received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and others who usually oppose climate protection legislation.
41
@Fernando You and Pat are both right. The rich are selling seaside property that will be underwater or dangerous for the buyer. The very rich will go wherever conditions are right for whatever they want to do. There are fewer and fewer of the very rich. The only people left they can get money away from are the next most rich. When the whole world burns, some of the world's wealth will be clawed back by the survivors. There will not be many.
19
Many rich people are rich because they are invested in Oil and Gas and Coal. They're also invested in Big Ag with its monocultures and soil erosion and burning down the Amazon to grow soy and corn to feed medicated cattle in contained animal feedlots. They're also invested in the Military Industrial Complex and the Prison Industrial Complex which are both inhumane and unjust systems. Or they're invested in Walmart and McDonalds which pay their employees serf wages. Or maybe they're invested in Casinos or Tobacco or Alcohol.
Most Rich People have gotten or maintained their wealth by investing or propagating the misery of the non-rich. Why should they suddenly care about Climate Change when they care about little else besides Profit and the Almighty Dollar?
105
Because they also like skiing!
1
@francesca
Exactly.
And we have an economic system that rewards bad behavior.
Maybe if it rewarded good responsible behavior instead, things could be different.
6
You are assuming that more money means more interest in preserving the environment. IF that were true, the rich would buy small eco-friendly homes, drive small cars, go vegetarian and such. That rich people, who have a vested interest in polluting, raping, and pillaging the air, water, and land, will deny global warming - is not a surprise.
What is beyond belief is that 40% of American voters (who in all likelihood will come out to vote in 2020) believe Trump and his social, economic, political, and environmental disaster - is the best thing that happened to serve their personal interests. The remaining sixty percent of Americans would not be bothered to vote, after heated discussions about who is the purest leftist of them all.
We wont even unite and vote to prevent the imminent destruction of everything American; what chance has skiing got?
78
The winter sports industry being the NRA of climate change is SPOT ON in this article. We are LUCKY that at least this recreation sport has a direct cause and effect, travel/chairlift electricity emissions impact snow/cold where snow is the reason we go at all. Think of ALL the other sports that people fly distances for or partake in that APPRECIATE a two degree warmer temperature. Flying to a golf destination, dragging your motorcycles and dune buggies to the desert, 75 foot yachts motoring to islands with 3 jet skis in tow.
An electric train to a ski area running electric chairlifts, all powered by renewables is (or can be) FEASIBLY implemented TODAY.
Look at this article as HOPE that at least skiing and snowboarding can be a model for a cleaner outdoor sports future and has a glaring incentive to do so.
Human hypocrisy in behavior is likely to continue. Sectors where gas emissions and the future of the sport aren't mutually exclusive are a happy coincidence, snow sports is one.
I agree, business leaders in snow sports need to act more on all this, but don't think for a second skiing/snowboarding is the most depressing outlook for high end recreation leading to global warming.
1
You might have to consider the carbon footprint of skiing itself. Tearing down swaths of trees to build trails and the houses near them; long drives in big cars and flights, as you say, around the world. Plus all the plastics and metals involved in the gear. Ski resorts deeply disrupt ecosystems.
We have to start looking not only at what our governments do, but how each and every one of us contribute to the problem.
7
Am I missing something? The most environmentally beneficial action ski areas can take is to shut down. The massive amounts of carbon used per person in transportation, snow making and lodging make skiing very hostile to our climate. Getting people to frozen mountain tops and housing, feeding and entertaining them is the ultimate carbon luxury. Doesn’t the writer appreciate the irony in using his hobby to lobby against climate change?
228
This idea of shutting down the ski resorts is correct, but is the kind of idea that leads to irrelevance. We cannot undo modernity. Shutting all carbon-intensive leisure activity will not even slow global warming. Shutting down modern life would. Humans no longer reproducing would. Those aren’t real options. We need, and can have, modern life, including modern levels of energy, AND sustainable life. That has to be the goal, not telling people they’re bad for not turning off the light or for skiing. All the anti-development voices here are also correct about how development hurts the environment (and not only because of warming). Figure out how to slow population growth. Figure out how to have a political campaign like the one in the article (brilliant!) that persuades the overwhelming majority who are not activists, who are indifferent, lazy, uninformed. Or we all lose. Self-righteous arguments only preach to choirs.
46
@Paul H Stay open but close down the lifts. Now we'll see who's really passionate about skiing.
29
Skiers and other affluent outdoor enthusiasts have some of the largest carbon footprints in the world, of course they don't want to face climate change. Second and third homes, huge houses, jet setting around, by all measures skiing and similar activities are a climate disaster. Buying a Tesla, and putting a virtue signaling solar array on your mansion while eating a labor intensive vegetarian diet at Whole Foods is killing the planet.
31
Maybe I'm misinterpreting this comment, but that takes some serious chutzpah to suggest that a vegetarian diet is somehow worse for the planet. @somsai, are you going to try to convince us next that smoking cigarettes is good for your health and the earth is flat?
BTW, this is the first time I've heard a "labor intensive" critique being thrown at a plant-based diet. @somsai, have you ever considered the numerous ways in which your factory-farmed meat that consumes 10 or 15 times the energy of plant-based food gets away with NOT being labor intensive? Let me tell you, it's not pretty.
2
The winter sport industry is built on energy consumption and exploitation of nature. Winter sports equipment, like skis and snowboards, are built from fossil-fuel dependent composites and other chemicals. Snowmaking machines burn fossil fuels. Snowmobiles burn fossil fuels. Ski resorts have large hotels, restaurants and other resort facilities that demand heat, electricity and significant energy to fuel all of their activities. Many high end resorts also have hundreds or more of houses and condos, as well as malls and all manner of commercial enterprises, many of which also are significant fossil fuel and water users.
And, of course, the entire mountain is carved up to build all of those facilities, including the trails themselves.
The winter sports industry’s other big problem is that, even without doing much to address climate issues, it has become just too expensive except for the well-off. Once it begins truly adapting to climate change and spending money to do so, prices will go up even more. Winter sports will face the same problem as golf—fewer and fewer people can afford to play as kids, so they never learn the sport. Generally speaking, ski resorts don’t make their money from first-time 40-year old skiers. The entire industry has a sustainability issue, partially driven by climate change but also by the ever-escalating cost of buying its product.
179
@Jack Sonville: they WANT it exclusive, the very rich.
That way they have bragging rights, and being able to ski or golf are markers of being wealthy.
If ordinary louts can ski or golf….it's just an ordinary stupid sport like bowling.
You don't see Mr. Richie Rich out bowling, do you?
Because it is "low class".
Skiing and golfing are "high class" because they are expensive in every way -- the equipment, the club memberships, the ski lodges or condos, the special clothing, the costly trips by plane to the "best resorts", the shopping, the hobnobbing with the upper crust, etc.
18
you live in Florida the land of energy intensive a.c.. We all contribute and all have our role to play in fixing it
11
Thank you for this important piece, Mr Fox.
I'll like to add that if the Fishers are mobilizing, then the Martens should mobilize too.
(Sorry, couldn't resist:)
1
So simple. The wealthy mountain sports and snow sports enthusiasts don’t live in the districts where they enjoys their vacations. Or own their second homes. Most of the labor is temporary and imported. Of course McClintock and LaMalfa aren’t going to be ousted, they don’t actually answer to the drivers of their economies.
I’ll relish the day the skiers storm the halls of the eastern Sierra and throw the anti-climate, anti-public lands hold outs of our great state.
1
Because ‘the rich’ can afford to go elsewhere when there’s no snow at home.
1
If you are a constituent in one of the districts mentioned, you should be asking your member of Congress to support the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R. 763). We need the right economic policy to accelerate the transition to clean energy, in a way that is both effective and fair to middle and lower income persons.
#PriceOnPollution #BipartisanClimate
1
@CynicalObserver
Thanks for highlighting this Act for new federal legislation. Without a federal law to curb greenhouse gases, no progress to put the earth into ecological balance can be made.
It is too much to ask the wealthy to change their lifestyles; people just want to have fun.
Make carbon / green house gas emissions pay for itself, this will force the ski resorts to find ways to avoid the sting of the carbon fee, and become more ecological.
1
This winter has been the best ski season in at least five years, with plenty of fresh snow across the west.
Given that, running the sad “grassy snow” photo from 2015 seems almost disingenuous.
And the data ending in 2016 makes the story seem out of date, like something that accidentally popped out of the archive.
Also, we made a list of all the most imports by reasons to save the planet from climate change, would “skiing” really be on it?
3
Oh...the irony!
You do realize that all those people flying across the country in jets to go to those ski resorts are contributing to climate change? It isn't as though this is necessary travel. It is a luxury for the wealthy destroying the planet for the rest of us.
If only cognitive dissonance were more pleasant to listen to.
7
A couple of thoughts to this matter.
The ski industry was invented for the rich. They just let some others ski too, to make it more feasible.
In the US, Vail Resorts perfected the game of skiing. Which is not at all about skiing. It's about real estate. Turning land with no value to a high stakes business was all what matters.
The resorts don't care about the environment. They sue communities for water rights to keep the snow making machines running.
But the funny thing is, the snow sport industry is dying anyway. It's a baby boomer sport and it will die with them. For all kinds of reasons there is not much interest from the younger generations. Besides the money, snow sports is an awkward activity. Just watch a family of 4 getting ready to ski. It's a nightmare you don't want to wish to your worst enemies. Awkward clothes and boots, it's cold and you pay lots of money for it.
What's not to dislike about it?
7
Rich people don't care because they don't have to, and they run everything and humans have no evolutionary ability to think long term. The fact that anything is being done is surprising, frankly. A reckoning is coming, big wars and massive population reduction, so, at best, skiing is just a marker of both climate change and our inability to act.
2
Perhaps the wealthy are not engaged politically against climate change because they are more aware of the non-functional design of the legislatures.
What most of us refer to as "gridlock", an inevitable, almost natural effect, like an ice jam in a river, is actually more deliberate. The two Parties control the rules and have found it most lucrative, in terms of contributions, to make sure nothing really happens. (Except, of course, more tax cuts for the wealthy contributor class.)
This "planned impotence" explains why, for instance, Ocasio-Cortez's tax hike proposal hasn't really upset any of those effected. They know that it will never happen, mores the pity.
So contributing to climate change advocacy groups or politicians with strident agendas to save the planet is seen as just a waste of money.
1
As a climate scientist I support articles about climate change, but the graphics in this article are scientifically unacceptable.
It is not OK to attempt to show trends using two four-year chunks of data. This is called cherry-picking. 1982-1986 was a stretch of exceptionally cold and snowy winters in much of the U.S. The graphic would look very different had you chosen 1987-1991 instead. Cherry-picking data was not OK when the climate deniers did it to say that climate change doesn't exist, and it's not OK now when the New York Times does it in an article about climate change.
If you want to teach people about science, you have to follow the principles of science. These graphics do not do that. It doesn't help the cause to "go low" just because others have done so. You need to be better.
5
The idea that this piece is about addressing climate change to save the ski industry rather than the poor countries that may wind up under water says it all.
5
The premise that people with college degrees making $75k (gross) annually qualify to be lumped in with billionaires and called rich is laughable. Why dont you go to Davos and find a billionaire industrialist who's willing to change their business model (and that of their colleagues), and pay their fair share of taxes, in order to stop global warming? Good luck. The people who have the power to change this won't, out of greed, callous self-interest, or sadism. And speaking of sadism, isnt it outright cruelty to include $75k wage earners as responsible parties alongside billionaires? And out of the pool of billionaires worldwide, how many of them personally ski or snowboard and would actually agree to make less money for he good of the planet?
6
All the politicians' talks can neither stop the warming of the atmosphere, nor the snow lines from rising higher. They only make more hot air that leads to further global warming.
Too many nihilistic responses of the usual kind: I don't ski so why should I care?
Reflects the bitter general irony of having critical information, but failing to act upon it.
3
I agree that higher snow levels and inconsistent precipitation are becoming a problem in the era of climate change. However, your figure that compares satellite imagery of different snow years is beyond misleading. Comparing a period of high snow fall (1982-1986) to a drought period (2012-2016) is the definition of cherry picking facts and is bad science. Next time you publish an article like this, make accuracy your objective - not shock-and-awe. You're journalists that claim in be in support of science. Act like it.
5
I find it hard to believe the average net worth of Trump's cabinet is $451 billion.
1
@E
What a fun fact! Where did you get this detail?
1
This essay is extremely naive. The legislators highlighted are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry and the grips of a right-wing propaganda/electioneering machine (including gerrymandering) built on denying science and, indeed, reality. Sure, more pressure from "rich people" to fight climate change would be great. However the majority of Americans already support action on climate while the antidemocratic hegemony of the current Republican party opposes it. The federal government has (or had) a policy apparatus in place to deal with this problem -- plenty of science agencies and, under Obama, a state department working on international agreements to address climate. Trump and the republican majority trashed it all. The American people need to regain control of our government and elect leaders who are not corrupt, who will place the long-term public good ahead of the short-term profits of their campaign donors. That's all!
3
This is a great idea. I think the idea needs to turn cool. Maybe a celebrity can sponsor a 'join me' campaign. Maybe a ski mogul can do a 'cool the slopes' one.
1
No snow close to my mansion in Vail, no problem! Let’s take the jet to BC and book the heli.
3
In Washington and Oregon, all Republican members of Congress vote anti-environment on climate bills.
It's pretty much a given.
3
You are seriously making an argument about fighting global warming on the basis of whether it will affect people's opportunity to throw themselves down a hill on skis? We are at risk of destroying the lives and livelihood of millions, of destroying entire species of animals and plants, and you are thinking about a sport? Strange priorities.
1
The first picture says it all because those ski lifts are designed to keep the chairs above the snow line.
1
It’s hard to take scientists seriously when they cry wolf too often. From imminent ice age fears in the 70s to Y2K to coming global epidemics to climate change.
Scientists need to learn to talk like politicians. Instead of presenting endless boring facts about climate change to convince people, say, ‘probability of climate change being a hoax is the same percentage as G.W. Bush being gay’.
1
It's much easier to make money giving speeches and making movies about climate change, all the while living in big houses and jetting all over the world than it is to do anything real about climate change. Yes, Al Gore, I'm talking about you.
3
They haven't figured out a way to have some poorly paid servant "take care of it".
Millionaire skiers shushing on man-made snow slopes ( like here in W. NY), boaters who have thier yachts glopped up with red and brown tides, and see swirling circles of plastic garbage in the ocean, those who eat shark fin soup....oblivious, and waiting for either someone else to clean it up, or, find someone to blame for it.
Meanwhile they vote for people who have never been out in the wilderness or on the ocean or paddled a wild river, who further line thier pockets....the only green they see is CASH.
They ( the "rich") must figure they only have 20 years or so left where they will ski, sail, hike....so they don't care.
They want thiers NOW... use up what's left of the environment, and gather all the riches they can still accumulate while they live.
Who needs pesky regulations?
1
In Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited, Julia tells Charles why she left her husband, a businessman, Rex. "I realized he was really there. He was just a tiny piece of a person, unnaturally developed."
This is true of many capitalists, particularly the successful ones. It's as if acquiring too much money creates a cognitive impairment. Some of this is born of the moral corrosion of privilege. Some is suppressed guilt. After all, you may legally be able to acquire millions or even billions of dollars but nobody can EARN those sums. Hence the late life philanthropy of many.
In short, wealth is often a barrier to thinking properly. And we've seen a parade of mentally defective capitalists, particularly lately, from our aggressively stupid chief executive to the delusional Howard Shultz who claims to be self-made. You can't MAKE billions of dollars. The statement alone is bizarre.
Wealth diminishes mental function as certainly as drugs or the chronic consumption of alcohol. Thus rich people are incapable of saving or preserving much of anything, save their personal fortunes.
2
Am I the only one who wonders how the author of this article can advocate for policies curbing non-renewable energy sources but then states he has skied on 5 continents. Exactly how did you travel to those continents, sir? By rowboat and burrow? Or did you fly in a fuel consuming airplane and Snow-worthy SUV that gets 10 miles to the gallon?
4
Gee, let me think about this. Oh yeah, once we stopped taxing the rich proportionately we the lesser folk lost any leverage over them. Now we can go beg for them not to buy Lincoln Navigators and GM Sierras all we want. They'll still invest their ill-gotten or inherited gains with lovely people like the Koch Brothers, who simply refuse to believe in global warming. Then when the climate becomes inimical to human life, they plan to escape Earth on some groovy super-expensive adventure...
3
The rich will find another way to amuse themselves, after all the snow is gone. I doubt it's the love of the sport. Skiing is a little cardio plus you deciding the best place to hang with your moneyed peeps, and be seen.
Instead of a passion, skiing is treated like a movie and a dinner. You can get a movie and dinner anyway. That's why the wealthy don't care.
1
As long as the big picture is neglected......I have been skiing for 35 years. But why is my being able to ski more important than the right of a third world chieftain to have 20 children half of whom will migrate to Europe and adopt European consumption patterns? Nuclear power is the only answer. It is just a matter of time.
2
Winter is so wonderful that millions of people flee it to warmer climates when they retire. Has anyone heard anyone in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and other warm states say that when they retire they want to move to northern Minnesota, North Dakota, or central Alaska? How about Chicago, Buffalo, or Detroit? Florida is very populated, with no ski areas. Amazingly they somehow survive. Residents enjoy year round outdoor activities including swimming, boating, fishing, and just being outdoors. They do their part to add to global warming by running their air conditioning a lot.
2
China is building 500 new coal plants, the Arabs have built an indoor ski run in the middle of a 100F desert, India's use of cow pucks for cooking is a huge source of emissions and also disease.
And this is the focus?
This is a global problem, and India and China are on top of the list. By highlighting issue 5739, you deflect and loose focus on the top problem.
1
Our culture's worship of rich people is one of the causes of its imminent demise. Rich people are fatuous and self-focused; they will never drive any policy that places the communal good above their own immediate good, or that requires any form of sacrifice. As a result, the headline "Why Can't Rich People Save Winter?" reads as absurd and laughable.
If the rich don't start out this way, they become this way under the corrupting effect of too much power. Step 1 in saving the planet is taxing them appropriately, thus enforcing the sacrifices that they will never make on their own.
2
“I’ve been a skier for 45 years, and my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents.”
Let’s take a moment to reflect on the carbon footprint of the author and skiing in general. Skiing is an increasingly elitist sport that directly contributes to climate change. They jump into their giant SUVs packed full of massive amounts of gear engineered from metals and plastic to spend $100 a lift ticket to ride on - at times - manufactured snow. “No friends on powder days” they’ll say as they wave from the plane, “stoked to grab some turns and catch some epic powder!”
3
If we're counting on the rich to solve our ecological problems...
it's all downhill from here.
3
O'Henry could not have written a finer article. The writer travels to ski areas in five continents to investigate climate change. Was it to investigate or to contribute to climate change?
The solution to climate change will cause pain to all. There won't be any sacred cows left untouched. Some things off the top of my head that need to be addressed.
1. Population growth (Japan seems to be the only country going in reverse)
2. Food production (I can make fresh guacamole in February in NYC. How's that possible without climate change? The meat industry?)
3. Immigration (People don't come to the US or Europe for freedom. They come to make money. $ = climate change)
4. Energy production
5. International trade
6. Our economic system
7. Being a "global" citizen (You can't travel the world for instagrammable moments without climate change)
2
This is just an anti-rich hate fest. Wealthy skiers are not your enemy. You labor under the assumption that money can fix global warming. Most skiers would LOVE to help save skiing. The only thing they won’t do is stop skiing to save skiing. I’m not sure that a few chairlifts and few plane rides does more to warm the globe than night games at football and baseball stadiums. Go demand no more night baseball. I know a ton of skiers who fly coach, sleep five to a motel room, and take the bus to the mountain.
1
First it came for our ski resorts, then it came for our golf courses, then it came for our yacht clubs... the horror! Puh-leeze. I’ll get right on the horn to my congressman to stop these outrages, as soon as I get back from my latest private jet excursion.
3
NYC is an extremely dense population area that could make a difference if it wanted to. Are internal combustion cars and trucks banned from the city? Does the city use primarily solar, wind and other sustainable methods to produce it's power? No to both questions. I suggest instead of all the breast beating and whining you put your money where your mouth is and demand these things. Along with the highest tax rate you can possibly bear which is what is required to get them. Go for it!
3
The author says, “I’ve been a skier for 45 years, and my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents...And I’ve visited dozens of resorts in the United States, Canada and Europe where the wealthy and not-so-wealthy gather....
With the outlook for winter so dim, it is surprising, shocking even, that the ski industry and the alpine 1 percent it serves have not led the charge to slow climate change — if not to keep the climate safe for their progeny, then at least to save the snow outside their resorts and chalets.”
What is the carbon footprint of your individual air travel, for skiing alone? What a load of hypocrisy. Your behaviour answers your own question. The rich won’t save the snow because they only care about their own enjoyment.
2
Rich people can afford to travel in order to find snow.
1
1982: 4.68 billion people
2016: 7.4 billion people
Compare these numbers with the time-lapse map. High time that global population entered the mainstream climate change conversation.
Note: this is not at all intended as "whataboutism" and I fully support the author's point. I'll add that those ultra-rich with chalets in Aspen are only there a few times a year and don't really live in the mountains, thus they fail to notice the changes.
Glad you're taking the "highroad," Geraldine. Pathetic.
3
It is for the same reason that Florida keeps electing politicians that want to do nothing about the fact that the state will be consumed by the sea. Because everyone is just living the one life they have and don't care about anything that is coming after them.
118
@TomB I agree with you, but the one thing I don't understand about that is their lack of regard for their children and grandchildren. So it's not that I think they don't care about anything that comes after them, I think it's that they live in denial as a matter of course, as many people do, and they're only concerned with what negatively impacts them today.
This is why so many people don't take steps to protect their own long-term health or even their own long-term finances for that matter. We're a country of people who want instant gratification and because of that we're heavy drug users (I just read that 80% of worldwide opiate use in the U.S.) and most people carry heavy credit card debt loads, frequently insanely paying 24% for the privilege. If one doesn't even take responsibility for their own body, how can you expect them to care about the long-term effects of climate change? It's so much easier to believe that it doesn't exist and is just a left-wing conspiracy of snowflakes.
13
@Martin Brooks
Keep in mind many of these people living with credit card debt and poor health don't have the financial resources to take any vacation, much less a ski holiday. They are the very labor from whom the 1% benefit so greatly.
8
The challenge of climate change is how to adapt.
Whether we're talking about people, plants or animals, rapid change is really taxing to the environment. Evolution isn't fast enough to keep up. Ecosystems can't just uproot. Life will adapt eventually but not on a human life time frame.
However, upper middle class skiiers can find new mountains.
The ones in the Americas were built up fairly recently. There are a lot more further north. This is not going to be a major problem.
https://earth.google.com/web/@51.23103341,-115.51456426,1464.31196339a,57921.83097255d,35y,38.20973574h,43.60667475t,0.00000085r/data=CkoaSBJACiUweDUzNzBjYTQ1OTEwYzRhZmQ6MHhjYWFmYWViZWRhYWM5NDYzGewoc5jUlklAIa6jYHyH5FzAKgVCYW5mZhgCIAEoAg
And if we do abandon lower lattitude/elevation mountains, hopefully the owners can donate them as parks and remove the abandoned infrastructure and let the new warmer ecosystem play out undisturbed.
1
Global warming is a World problem. Most governments are paying lip service to it and others, like our President, ignore it. Skiers and the sport of skiing (a pursuit of the wealthy) do not hold water here. The billions that will die now and in the future have more importance. The author needs to broaden his outlook.
3
Sobering article by Porter Fox. The degradation to winter activities by global warming is devastating. There are statistics that show the effects, and also anecdotes.
While anecdotes don't provide evidence for scientific research, they make one think. Fifty years ago I was a college student learning to ski at Okemo (VT) on Easter week. At the bottom, on the green Sachem trail, I lost my ski. I decided to walk down to get it, but when I put my foot on the snow, my entire leg sunk in, nearly to my hip. That's how much snow there was at the end of March at Okemo in 1967. Today, no one would question just walking on the snow to get the ski.
The above *is* one anecdote, but we are losing the snow. The vast industrial and population growth that the world has seen has been at the expense of the environment which is used as a dumping ground for civilization's entropic waste. The United States is an inefficient decentralized economy that requires energy to thrive. We don't even take the train to ski anymore; we all drive. And countries copy our culture.
The dual problem to carbon pollution for skiing is that the number of skier visits increases; I've come up with the maxim that New England ski resorts aren't skied, they are trampled. Diminished winters don't support increased skier attendance.
I'm a cynic; the inertia of our so-called "industrial progress" makes it well nigh impossible to stem global warming, but I'll support environmentally responsible candidates.
1
@Charles Right about the train. I would love to be able to take a ski day trip out of Penn or Grand Central but there's no viable way to do it. Used to be a train from Kingston up right past Belleayre. Long defunct. No interest in reviving it. But our idiotic, worthless Governor installed a gondola at Belleayre with MTA money. Drive up and see it sometime.
1
As a nation of voters, we all could decide to vote for politicians that take climate change seriously (while agreeing to differ on other stuff) and we all could decide that large scale action of the many, working together, is what is needed to avoid catastrophe.
3
I love skiing, but it's hard not to admit that the industry itself has a huge carbon footprint -- especially in the U.S. where everyone drives hours to the mountains.
Happily, there is an alternative to the resorts: hiking the tallest peaks and skiing them with the new backcountry ski equipment. In 20 years, that will be only way to enjoy the feeling of gliding down the snow.
3
40 years ago, we reliably had deep snow cover in the Sierra, by Thanksgiving. Rain above 4000' was unheard of between November and March. Spring skiing on 'corn' was expected through May, sometimes until June. Now, every prediction of blizzard conditions is received with skepticism and the fear that monsoon might be a more apt description, if the storm even appears.
I've skied on those patches and narrow paths of at Squaw Valley to reach still-intact snow fields a few years ago. The ski industry in the US is doomed. It is too late to stop the rising temperatures, even if we all completely stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow.
Skiers are emblematic of our passivity in the face of a real, present threat to our well-being, but they are not alone. Economies that are vital, weather patterns that agriculture depends upon and the livability of coastal populations are being disrupted world-wide already. We Americans are gluttonous consumers of carbon-based energy. We need to embrace the transition to electric cars, solar power and reduced meat in our diet. And, we need to elect leaders, who will deal with the threat aggressively.
We skiers will find other recreation, but the people and economies, whose survival depends upon the current delicate climate balance, will be destroyed. Winter play is not the issue.
4
Many of the Colorado ski areas are in the second Congressional District in Colorado, now represented by Joe Neguse and for a decade represented by Jared Polis. (and before that, Mark Udall).
All are strong environmentalists who care about climate change.
1
I'll admit I haven't read the rest of the comments here. So, maybe this point has been made. But the entire planet is direly effected by climate change. On the other hand, it's way cheaper to create man made snowing environments than it will be to change our global environmental course. Yes, skiers should already appreciate and love all the wonders of nature, but appealing to the self-interest of a sport that is already populated primarily by the relatively well-to-do is not facing the real issue: All of humanity has to be concerned for all of humanity. Skiers need to get behind environmental change in order to save the planet, not just the slopes.
3
Even without reading this article I knew the ski industry was doing some things to reduce global warming—just not enough. All I can say is low-snow years are really depressing: less terrain to ski, grass beneath the lift, and shorter seasons. For the sake of the sport of skiing, I hope the industry becomes more aggressive in its fight against global warming. As for warm-weather alternatives, I have absolutely no desire to try a zip line.
2
More people should ski, it’s tremendously fun, healthy, family oriented and an amazing escape from the daily grind. Where else can you let the kids run free and literally not worry about them? Everyone I know who skis is a happy, productive, generous and outgoing individual. The sport sows independence and personal growth; no talking necessary! Growing up skiing I never watched football, I was always outside in the mountains, skiing. The world would be a much better place if more people skied. Turn off the tube and go ski!
4
@Green man
Is skied this morning ! I skinned up at our local ski area at 7:00 am. Nice and quiet, good workout, and first tracks down a run, even before the Patrol.
November in Northern Vermont was great this year. Tons of snow, and no lifts running; those who skinned up had untracked powder lines on the ski runs, or in the backcountry.
1
The status symbol of "rich people" is a large carbon footprint, e.g. flying, skiing, boating, large and multiple homes, luxury vehicles, etc. They aren't going to give that up; their egos depend on it, and in many cases that's all they have.
7
@RC - remove the skiing and boating and you have Al Gore.
1
The only way to change the world’s behavior regarding climate change is through brute force applications...military. Financial incentives , or rather dis-incentives, being directly associated with behavioral changes relating to survival will not work. Here is a monetary tax, but you can’t chop down trees to farm so you die. Population is out of control. Force is the only means.
1
@Pilot - So you propose that our Air Force bombs the US back to the stone age? I have a problem with that.
But hey, look at incentives clearly - my state first, then yours.
I get texts from ComEd here in Chicago on peak demand days in summer offering me a credit to reduce power use during peak hours and I get money. I take the money.
Renewable energy targets at state levels are working - read about your state:
"In 1999, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) adopted a rule, Goal for Renewable Energy (P.U.C. Substantive Rule 25.173), that sets the state's renewable portfolio standard (RPS) based on a bill enacted by the Legislature as part of restructuring in Texas (see S.B. 7). Texas’s RPS mandates 5,000 megawatts (MW) of new renewables be installed in Texas by 2015 (for a cumulative net capacity of 5,880 MW of renewable energy, or 5.4% of the state's summer net capacity in 2012) and sets a target of 10,000 MW of renewable energy capacity by 2025.
According to the annual compliance report prepared by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the program administrator for the Texas Renewable Energy Credit Trading Program, Texas surpassed its 2025 target in 2009 and had 26,045 MW of additional renewable energy capacity (24,381MW of which was wind) in 2017 relative to 1999."
1
Ski resorts losing the most snow are too desperate staying in business they don't have the resources to give to POW. While those with abundant snow don't contribute to POW because their competitive gain comes at the expense of the ones going out of business - for now.
Typical of the global warming emergency - it isn't an emergency while the money is rolling in by destroying the environment. Indeed, for the 1% skier, their source of wealth is more important than global warming and, bottom line, more important than skiing or snow.
Skiing will simply become more "exclusive" where only the wealthy need apply to the membership-only Trump-gated ski resorts WALLED off from the rest of us. If the Kochs had their way they'd decapitate the tops of the newly snow-free mountain slopes to dig for more coal.
Skiing may die as a sport for the rest of us, but they will always have golf - slope golf, anyone? Indeed, they're already playing golf in Greenland, of all places. Though the greens are still white, it is melting fast enough that they will soon become green in no time. Besides, the wealthiest will always be able to ski Dubai.
As for water, we'll always get it, even if it means paying through the nose to the sugary soda water conglomerates for access to the drinkable variety. The 1% love that, already implementing it worldwide - ready to displace oil as the most valuable commodity. We won't be able to condense clean water out of the atmosphere if the Kochs have their way
4
"They’ve also developed warm-weather resort activities like mountain biking, zip lines, ropes courses, mountain coasters and music festivals."
Colorado has seen rapid development of summer mountain activities and a surge in visitation. While the additional business may stave off declines in resort revenue, it does nothing to slow the decline in snow. After all, resorts, still largely depend on carbon based energy for transporting tourists as well as entertaining, housing and feeding them. The carbon footprint is expanding just as it always has. The snow-sports industry is unfortunately in its sunset period.
2
Fear not, wealthy skiers. When the snow eventually melts, you'll be able to ski at an indoor ski mountain in Las Vegas; chilled by coal-fired refrigeration units.
Sound crazy? They already have one in Saudi Arabia which creates snow by burning oil.
Lord, save us from the wealthy.
27
@Barnaby Wild: Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing an indoor ski area built in Southern Louisiana.
1
My fondest memories of childhood are winter scenes (upstate New York, New England), but I almost dread winters now because they're too depressing, all those 50+ degree days in January and February. Sure, we have had a recent severe cold snap, but the big problem is that there's no consistent below-freezing temperature anymore.
Maybe skiers, both downhill and cross-country, can help spur real action, real reduction of greenhouse gases. But we'll need far more of the public to get on board. The trouble is, so many people today (in my experience) say they don't like the cold, and almost welcome these warm winter days. TV forecasters almost always cheer when they're telling you how warm it's going to be in mid-winter. How can you convince people to demand climate-change policy when they confess to being comfortable with the new climate? That, to me, is the biggest problem facing the world: People like warmth. If climate change were making the Earth colder, there'd be a lot more demand for governments to act.
10
@Umberto: Forecasters in South Louisiana constantly say “We’ll be warming up nicely,” as though we need more of that. And why the Deep South participâtes in Daylight Savings Time I’ll NEVER understand.
1
@Umberto
Don't say people like warmth until you have spent a summer in Las Vegas.
1
As the oceans warm, evaporation increases, and so does precipitation: More rain, more snow.
3
Unfortunately it takes two elements to make snow: water and cold air. Temperatures have risen to the point where it is just as likely to rain as snow at 7000 ft. elevation. Almost all the ski areas have base elevations at 6000 ft.
Translation: It's often raining at the bottom of the mountain, even when it's snowing at the top. And at least one out of four or five storms, it's raining at the top of the mountain as well. Even if there is snow on the ground, the rain washes it away.
2
@Jonathan Katz
Great theory, except that doesn't seem to be happening.
As the oceans warm, evaporation increases, and so does precipitation: More rain.
1
Notice one thing in common with all these legislators listed in the article? They are all from rural areas of the West. The places that need jobs from the ski resorts. The article failed to list the money these people receive from the oil, gas and natural resource companies, follow the money to get at the truth.
9
It’s sad to see a couple of trends occurring at my local mountain of Whistler Blackcomb. Vail Resorts recently purchase the mountain several years ago and has focussed their marketing efforts on appealing to wealthy individuals across the globe instead of locals based in Canada. There is now a huge increase in international travellers and the middle class can no longer afford the increased costs.
The ski industry in Whistler is purely focussed on profit. Governments love the tourist dollars as well. The focus on profit before the needs of the planet will fuel climate change further.
8
@Conrad
Yes and those wealthy individuals are all flying in on planes.
5
@Conrad
I’m skiing in Colorado today. I have an Ikon Pass. $949 no tax. I’ll ski 28 days on it. I could ski more. Passes make skiing cheaper.
1
Kudos to Jeremy Jones for launching Save Our Winters!
I'll keep that in mind every time I watch a video of him hopping out of a helicopter to snowboard.
12
@Allen Rebchook. POW's entire business model is based on this type of hypocrisy: giving those who are part of the problem (ski industry and professional athletes) a way to greenwash their way past their bad habits. This is actually the "elite charade of changing the world" (see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/18/anand-giridharadas-author-aspen-wealthy-elite) a philanthropic side hustle that makes whatever they do ok if they donate to POW or show up in Washington once a year under the guise of having a powerful voice. For me, I'm giving my annual donation to an NGO that means it.
1
Rich people can't save winter because they're not interested. They don't care. They can pack up and go further North or anywhere else they want. Why should they bother?
Climate change is real. The collapsing of the walls that keep the polar vortex further North fed the deep cold these last couple of weeks and caused our president to ask "what global warming" and asking for "some of that now"!
When willful ignorance and total disdain for science is resident in the White House there is little hope for real change in attitudes necessary to implement industrial changes necessary to end pollution and climate change.
We can't wait for the billionaires to act. We can't wait for changes in industrial and waste pollution to happen automatically either. We can't afford to wait for the American Congress and politics to change either.
If we want to save winter and the rest of the seasonal changes that took for granted not too long ago, then all of the rest of us must soon act.
We need to demand social, world climate responsibility in all aspects of the conduct of our living and manufacturing and energy use. We need to end the pollution of our atmosphere, our lands and water supplies and adapt to living responsibly. We cannot endlessly pollute and cause harmful waste products to destroy the environment we live in.
We can start by teaching environmental responsibility and voting for representatives who will commit to change and cleanup. If not, winter will grow ever shorter.
7
#1 controllable factor: overpopulation. Least politically palatable subject: overpopulation.
3
I remember when Powder Magazine started in the 70's. Skiing was affordable in those days. I marvel at how anyone can afford to take their family skiing these days. That being said, I will ask why it is up to rich people to "save" winter sports. We all have an interest in having a planet on which to live. I do not have an excess of money. Last night, as I was reading, I came across a passage that suggested a meditation on how many people are involved in getting a cup of coffee to me, and expressing gratitude for all that is involved in that. Perhaps a meditation on how much energy and how many people are involved in getting one into a chair on a lift, or making the equipment and related paraphernalia of skiing would be a good start on appreciating how much energy is involved in winter sports. We all depend on this one planet for our existence. I used to work in the ski industry and marveled at the arrogance of many skiers, but tried to keep in mind, in my kinder moments, that we all enjoyed the sport and the beauty of the outdoors,
4
Remember that climate change is not eliminating ski hills, it's just moving them around to new locations.
Ski hills in British Columbia are getting record amounts of champagne powder year after year due to climate change, and the ski season is lasting longer each year.
Sadly, America no longer views Canada as an ally, but as a target for tariffs, so Americans really aren't welcome.
BAPS; Boycott American Products and Services.
2
That’s preposterous. A huge majority of Americans view Canada as an ally. Are you that simple that you can’t look beyond the next two years?
2
The problem for places like Aspen is the prospect of becoming an economic ghost town. Though SkiCo is embracing alternative products (yes, they are "products") like mountain biking and zip lines, billionaires don't do those things, as the chic factor is missing. So, Aspen home prices start falling -- fast and far. Limited space for hotels and when the middle class family of five come to town for the zip line fun they don't dine at $125 per person restaurants or stay at $750 a night hotels. Whole thing falls apart.
2
I suspect that a portion of the billionaires with lovely, energy efficient chalets perched there on the mountains are involved in efforts to slow our warming Earth. They also realize that there are other major problems extant - not enough jobs to support a family, a lack of universal healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, poorly funded public schools. These thoughtful elite also are watching what happened to the neoliberal President Macron in France, who - after cutting the rich yet another tax break - saw a revolt in the form of the Yellow Vests when he levyed a gas tax on everyone - "saving the planet" on their backs when austerity budgets had driven them to the point of despair. Those who should pay for efforts to slow global warming are the polluting, extracting industries, but trying selling this to the likes of the Koch brothers and their ilk, who are busy squeezing the last dime out of these industries and the last dime out of the rest of us.
9
Thank you, Mr. Fox for the time and energy it took to put this editorial together. I hope you will reach a few of your intended targets and be persuasive. It is indeed a paradox that an industry that depends so heavy on winter isn't more unified in its advocacy. Not withstanding the many comments by readers minimizing the impact of such advocacy or arguing that the ski industry should just eliminate itself, in fact, it is precisely the kind of effort that could lead to real change. We need red State, conservative representatives to support action on climate change because they see it in their best interest, which it is. Of course all of us can do more individually, and we should. But unfortunately, the problem is now so big that any lever is worth pushing to overcome our collective inertia. The best option for change in this country is a carbon fee and dividend plan that offers financial incentives for curbing fossil fuel use and incentivizes the innovations we’ll need to overcome this mess. Such a plan exists and has been introduced this session in the House of Representatives – HR 763. It has some bipartisan support but it needs more.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/763?s=1&r=27
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/why-we-support-a-price-on-pollution/
If your representative is a Republican, and you want a market-based solution that has the best chance of curbing carbon use in the US now, please read about and advocate for this bill.
4
@HG
Unfortunately, the de facto Republican leader, President Trump is the number one Climate Change denier. Remember, he is the one who said "Global Warming is a Chinese Hoax."
So GOP politicians, especially in these Republican controlled States (Wyoming?) are terrified of going against the Trump doctrine , that Climate Change isn't real. They don't want to be attacked by a Trump Twitter storm.
1
''In Aspen and its surrounding environs, nearly 50 billionaires have homes.'' - Aye, but how many of them are their primary homes, and how many are used more than a couple of days a year ? They are status symbols - nothing more.
The whole idea of being a billionaire is obscene on so many levels (especially with huge income disparity to all others, and the dwindling resources of our planet) They should be taxed out of existence. (and not just @ a paltry 3% which is being proposed)
Having said that, the idea of climate change is not anything a billionaire can tackle, or even 50 billionaires. It is not a national problem either - it is a GLOBAL one.
Even the Paris agreement is made up of minor to modest proposals that are no where near enough. (and yet this republican administration pulled out of it)
Even if ALL of the snow disappeared, then they would build indoor private facilities to manufacture their own snow. Think that is a wild prediction ? Think again.
The rich are going to hang on to or move their zeroes in their bank accounts around the world (the places where there are the least resistance or tax policy) They are going to build their glorified underground shelters, and they are going to talk a good game about giving back, but it is all but a token to the overall problems we face.
Time to get real.
12
Living in the Beehive State this is very apparent.
Skiers fly in during our bad air inversion season to head to PC or the canyons usually not thinking they are part of the problem.
Sundance just ended and how many flew in, skied and never gave it another thought.
We all need to take ownership and fly less often.
9
I get it that this article attempts to be "wedge" by getting the attention of a particular group of people. But, honestly, being unable to ski at present ski resorts will be among the very least of anyone's problems if we don't make a radical change in our emission rates within the next 10 years. By 2040 on our present course we face mass malnutrition and starvation, major cities literally under water, mass global migration, a crisis in drinkable water, and quite likely an unstoppable shift to a greenhouse earth that will destroy up to 90% of animal life and perhaps human civilization. The very rich may think they can ride this out comfortably in their bunkers but I rather doubt they will succeed.
12
@willow you’re correct when Las Vegas turns off their lights, air conditioning and airport the wold will have less carbon emissions. Thank you for leading the charge and getting your fellows Navadaians to turn off the air, eat foods from the desert and drink your own water from your mountains.
1
Skiers are among the most consumerist "sportsmen" out there. While I wouldn't suggest that POW stop its efforts to get rid of oil and gas loving politicians, who are the people most responsible for the 50 years of climate change-denial that has brought us to this point, I'd be more hopeful if the ski community weaned itself from gas guzzling trucks, single occupancy commutes to the mountain, and above all, stop having kids! While you're at it, lay off the plastic gear fest and try to make that goretex coat last more than one season.
8
You might want to do a little reading. The birth rates of Western nations is well below replacement levels. You’re complaining about something that has actually been occurring for years.
1
Alaska and the polar regions were once hot enough to support flora and fauna as tropical as palm trees and crocodiles. Climate is going to change with or without fossil fuels. Quit trying to take natural occurrences and equate them to man for political and financial gain.
3
@bfree
True the geological historical scrapbook of our planet shows tropical times in areas of the sub-arctic and arctic. Those periods of climate change were very slow and only in the past 150 years or so has human behavior/consumption become a major catalyst in accelerating climate change.
1
My friend, Problem is: Should Alaska be able to grow palm trees and avocados in the next century, the lower 48 would averaging 100F in winter and 150F in summer.
This sort of argumentation is the price for America abandoning free quality education for everyone back in the 1960. Now you have Trump and Fox and a populace who's head is as easily twisted as people's heads in Germany in the 1930ies: Somebody screaming simplistic "truths", the sheep follow him to their grave...
1
@bfree Naturally occurring climate shifts don't happen with the speed that the one we are now in is occurring. You were once not alive, but if I pushed you off a ledge that wouldn;t be returning you to your natural condition.
1
I buy a discounted season pass, purchase used ski gear, bring a pack lunch, and always carpools to the resorts. Skiing is expensive if you're not a local or if you make it expensive. Boulder has public transportation to Eldora, a mountain that priorities carpooling on weekends. Don't lump all skiers together as wealthy elites who vacation in Aspen.
13
@RW
Yes, I bought a discounted ski pass, drive only 15 minutes to my ski area, and used my climbing skins, and backcountry skis to "skin up" for a run before the lifts started today. It was very peaceful at 7:00 am !
Here in Northern Vermont, the ski industry is very important for local jobs, even if the wages are low.
2
@RW
Point well taken and good on you, But I suspect you are in the minority.
1
Rich people believe that they can spend their way through such problems. They can always fly to a new location, further north, or heli-ski where no resort exists today
8
As often happens, the state of New Mexico was not mentioned in this important editorial. Home to one of the best ski areas in the country, Taos Ski Valley became the first ski resort in the world to become a certified B-Corporation. Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
In addition, our US Senators, Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich along with US Representative Ben Ray Lujan have lifetime voting scores in the mid 90th percentiles according to the League of Conservation Voters. They care deeply about this issue.
Kudos to Louis Bacon, the billionaire owner of Taos Ski Valley, for doing the right thing.
20
live outside of Milwaukee. Same general area going on 40 years now. In the past, snowmobiles were big business. Clubs, groomed trails, poker runs etc. During winter, you would hear or see them all the time. This week, thanks to a couple of storms, i saw 2 of them out again. The trails are still there i guess. The past few years i heard riders lament about how they had to go farther north for decent snow. It is currently 40 degrees out and rainy....Would imagine the trails are becoming slushy...
How long do you cost justify a recreational product you use less and less?
3
A lot of the comments seem to believe that the solution is to shut ski areas down or for people not to fly. Skiing however, is not the only activity in the world that requires the consumption of energy and resources. In fact, almost all activities do, and we can't just shut them all down. What we can do is is find new ways to power the things we like to do. For ski resorts, this means finding alternative energy sources to power lifts and building in more uphill skiing access. It also means foregoing some of the more obvious offenders, such as snowmaking and snowmobile tours. It's also important to understand that modern ski resorts are less about skiing than they are about real estate, and real estate does not suffer from diminished resources.
3
@PR Vanneman
Real estate does not suffer from diminished resources?
I have beahfront property near Death Valley. Hundreds of miles of pristine sand. Great opportunity for the right buyer. Call me.
3
Thank you, Porter Fox, for placing climate change in the context of wealth. As a ski journalist and publisher of the on-line magazine, SeniorsSkiing.com, I hear a lot about the challenges faced both by the industry and by older skiers. POW is doing good work, and the new Outdoor Business Climate Partnership is a welcomed development. But unlike politics, climate is not local and reversing warming requires global cooperation. One could argue that extreme wealth transcends borders, but the very rich rarely cooperate to achieve positive global change. Global change requires global cooperation. History tells us that's unlikely.
5
@SeniorsSkiing
Don't forget Donald Trump took the USA out of the Paris Climate Accord.
1
Human beings, and frogs, respond poorly to slowly gathering threats. We only respond when there is an immediate crisis. If we had a fully functioning government they would be planning for long term crises; but, there is little or no political campaign fund raising to address long term problems like climate change and our horrible healthcare system, so those problems go unaddressed.
8
At least in WA, and I would suspect the same in Oregon, the constituents of the legislatures that are voting against climate change are not climate change advocates. On the drive from Uber-left Seattle to Steven's Pass (now a Vail Resort property) you will pass many pro-Trump signs while cruising along in your Tesla. The disconnect exists because skiers do not, for the most part, live where they ski. Secondly, as I'm sure many skiers have noticed, many employees at ski resorts are not from the legislative district that the resort is located in - they come from the nearest city, or far flung countries like Australia or Brazil. I don't think the incentive for these legislatures is high enough to save skiing as the blowback from such a stance in a conservative district would be too high.
4
Thousands of feet of glaciers melted all over the northern hemisphere but we weren’t here. Continuing to melt and we are here. And you think our actions are totally responsible and we can just adjust our actions and viola it’s fixed. Good luck.
3
@Mike
Sigh. Let's review a few things:
Forests. The earth was once covered - and we weren't here. Now, what little is left, is still being cut down at a rate of an England-sized area per year.
Population: For thousands of years, there was virtually nobody on earth. A hundred million or so. In the past 200 years, we've gone from 700 million to about 8 billion. 8 billion is such a huge number, most people can't even begin to comprehend it.
Oceans: They've been healthy and vibrant, teeming with life for millennia. We've now lost about 60% of all life there is in the oceans - within the last 45 years.
Mike - ever have a party in your house? And as the number of people increase, let's say 20 people, it gets insanely hot? So hot that you've got to open the windows, in Idaho, in January? Ever clean up after a party of 20 people leave? Notice the mess? 8 billion people Mike. First time ever in history there's so many. You don't think that 8 billion people can have an impact on the world? Add to that billions of large mammals (cows, pigs) to feed them. No impact there either? Mike do you know a much a billion is? It would take a person 25 years or so just to count to a billion, if that's all they did, around the clock. 8 billion? A few lifetimes. It's a big number Mike.
Yes, we've 'caused climate change Mike. Accept it.
22
@Mike
Arghh...the comments about geologic climate change happening, so human climate change is not a problem always drive me crazy.
Dude, check out the timescales...the glaciers melted over thousands of years, the climate change caused now by humans is happening in 100 year time scale...that's the difference...and it's a big difference. Plants and animals can adjust over thousands of years, in a hundred years not so much. Same goes for civilization. It's not humans as a species that are threatened, we're too adaptable for that, we can walk inland, walk north...but if you think you'll be able to comfortably co-exist with everyone else as a civilization as the coastal cities are flooded and millions of people lose their homes and move inland and try to take over new areas to live, then think again, it's going to get very ugly.
7
@Mike You're missing the point of the article, Mike. It did not say human actions are "totally" responsible for the glacier melt. The article demonstrates with visuals that the continuing snow melt has disastrous effects for the future of the planet and its inhabitants if influential people deny that climate change is real. Electing governing officials who do not understand/accept the long term big picture is foolish at the very least. Unfortunately, most/many? people can't think beyond their narrow, egocentric lives.
2
Here's a thought for author and his skiing. Transportation is a major contributor to human-induced global warming. Your long drive up to the ski area is destroying the sport that you love. So are airline trips to Europe or Australia, and so is the daily commute.
Most people can't get by without the daily commute, so society has to fix that one. Most people can get by without skiing. It's optional.
I see that others made this point before me. It seems almost self-evident that our life styles are the problem. So is the way we get energy, but technology and leadership can fix that. Our lifestyles need to be on the table as well; as long as people believe that their money entitles them to drive 200 miles to ski or fly to the ends of the Earth, we are doomed. There is no fix for that sense of entitlement but to change it.
9
Why can't those who love the sport save winter? It is because they are big part of the problem. These ski resorts with their exorbitant fees are a tremendous encroachment on nature and use vast amounts of electricity. If they love to ski, let em ski cross country.
9
I have known Mike Kaplin (CEO of Aspen Ski Co) for 30+ years. He always impressed me with his forward thinking and critical assessment of difficult situations. His work toward renewable energy resources shows his leadership well beyond the management of his resort. It shows his devotion to his children and their futures. Bravo Mike! Now it is time for the skiing community (read: the skiers) to support those who are making strong initiatives in sustainability, like Taos Ski Valley and a few select others. Put your money where your mouth is, skiers! Lets not only save skiing, but lets save the planet!
7
Skiing isn't essential. When bottled water is hard to get, the rich will act.
13
@William Schmidt
When bottled water is hard to get the rich will tell everyone to just drink champagne.
1
These people also tend to own homes on or close to the ocean, which they use during warmer weather. I'm sure that they will be delighted when the water comes up to and around their homes. After all, they won't have to walk so far to their boats.
6
The wealthy will flock to new resorts in places that will have snow. “Ski Alaska!”
5
As much as I love Richard Branson, this reminds me of his carbon-fuel guzzling industrial complex and his plea for the little people to be aware of their use of plastic (straws). Look in the mirror, is my low tech advice to the uber wealthy.
13
Saving the skiing industry may not be high on the list of reasons to fight climate change, but it is an interesting point of interface between billionaires and the climate crisis. I've been thinking for years that an upside of income inequality might be that it would only take a dozen billionaires investing in renewable energy to save the planet; changing a dozen strategically chosen minds might be easier than changing the minds of the propagandized general population.
14
@Kyle Gann
A point I'd not considered - good job!
Unless....unless many of these billionaires have already decided that there's nothing to do. With a population of 8 to 10 billion people on the planet it'll be impossible to change how things currently are. So maybe these billionaires have decided to just procure some large compounds, running on renewables and self-sustaining. Maybe they figure that once several billion people die off within the next 20 years or so, that then, it'll be time to effect change.
Didn't Elon Musk buy a huge compound in a remote part of New Zealand? Oh, and how about Bronson and his island where they're trying to make the ecosystem as diverse as possible.
Rising sea levels? Not an issue if you have a super-yacht that runs on renewables.
I love your idea Kyle - but me thinks that billionaires got to be billionaires not by generosity but by avarice. And as such, I think they've already made their plans for how to try to survive the imminent die off that may well be under way.
7
"Why Can’t Rich People Save Winter?
Ski season is shrinking. Yet the people who love the sport aren’t doing enough to stop climate change."
I’ve been a skier for 45 years, and my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents."
"I’ve visited dozens of resorts in the United States, Canada and Europe where the wealthy and not-so-wealthy gather — and where snowpacks are shrinking."
The author blames others who love the sport for failing to do enough for climate change, as he flies from continent to continent, contributing to the climate change for which he blames others.
34
@DJS I'll just ski in Quebec instead of Vermont.
1
@DJS:
WOW! Deflect much? This is a real problem; shooting the messenger is irresponsible. Climate Change is here, and the author's call for activism among the very rich makes a lot of sense.
1
@Sage Adapt or die
1
Climate change is a collective crisis, but all won't be effected equally. The rich will always use their money to insulate themselves from "inconvenience" and discomfort. The poor will of course suffer the most.
Those that are profiting from an economic status quo, which exacerbates the climate crisis, are likely to be resistant to anything that will effect their personal bottom line. This is especially true if they perceive that they will not be personally effected by the most drastic effects of climate change.
The middle class in the Developed nations must also bear a certain responsibility as well. We are in a time where air travel is like taking a bus for many people. Consumerist culture has led many people into cycles of buying manufactured goods that they don't need, and throwing out things they could still use. There are more cars on the road than ever (China, India, US).
The US government has, by and large, refused to take the lead on climate, on the world stage (along side the E.U. countries). Even attempts by the the Obama administration to set minimum fuel efficiency standards were fought by special interests and eventually eviscerated under the Trump administration's EEA (Environmental Endangerment Agency).
In short the usual factors of human nature are at play: Vanity, hubris and self-interest. Add in the issue of coordinating action among disparate nation states and you have a thorny problem indeed.
9
For a ski resort to spend resources adapting to climate change rather than trying to prevent it is the smart business plan because a vision of a world which emits significantly less carbon in the next generation or two is not realistic. Wealth is growing fast all over the place & billions of Asians, Africans & South Americans will want cars & air conditioners & big houses, just like we have. Renewable technology will continue to improve, but not nearly fast enough to offset the need for cheap new energy. So the climate will warm, sea levels will rise, and, among other things, a bunch of marginal ski areas will go out of business. As Bjorn Lomburg so carefully argues, on a global scale the impacts of climate change are in all likelihood addressable at a manageable cost. Perhaps he’s wrong. In any case, we will get to find out.
5
As a lifelong skier and scientist who studies climate change, I’m disheartened by the largely negative reactions of other readers to this welcome column. Yes, there are larger contributors of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than well-to-do winter sports enthusiasts, and yes, we should have done more, earlier. But if we’re going to successfully minimize catastrophe for future generations, we need a multipronged strategy that acknowledges that people, industries and institutions are at different stages of awareness, and target those issues that people care most about. I applaud Mr Fox’s actions and message and will look for ways to reward those ski areas that are moving to the climate forefront.
31
@Arizona Refugee. I agree with you whole-heartedly. Amazed at the cynicism of some of the commenters. It's not all about the wealthy and their sports. It's about the fact that we are losing our most basic water supply. If the wealthy and the environmentalists join together to make an impact against greenhouse emissions and better stewardship of the areas in question through the power of the vote, we should all be thrilled at the prospect. After all, skiers only rent the snow for a short time each year, it eventually melts away into the coffers of those who think it's OK to own the water... Entities like "Nestle" for example will become humanities problem of the future when they decide who will get water and who will not...
3
@Arizona Refugee
My sentiment exactly!
We are middle income family, make many efforts in our micro cosmos to not contribute to climate change, we reduce, recycle, reuse...( 1200 sf house for 5). We save strategically money to be able to go skiing.....
Not all skiers are 1 % not carrying ...
2
If people are really serious about constraining climate change then lets harvest the low hanging fruit first. I'll support carbon taxes and other measures that primarily impact the poor and middle class AFTER we agree to the following.
1. Ban all use of private jets, and yes this includes Hollywood and big business.
2. Place large and escalating taxes on energy and water use in expensive homes above a certain size. Yes this includes Hollywood, investment bankers, politicians and billionaires!
3. Index carbon taxes to income.
Once our elites agree to these measures then I am willing to do my part. Otherwise alternative energy schemes and carbon taxes will continue to be just another wealth transfer from the poor and middle class to the wealthy without doing anything to get at the real problem.
If the elites really believe climate change is an existential threat then let them put their money where their mouth is. No more "environmental advocates" flying in private jets to, supposed, climate conferences.
25
@Steve W
Banning private jets would just lead to an increase in charter services. Better would be to charge all plane passengers a fuel use per person tax. The huge plane flying the Trump family of three would cost a whole lot more than a small jet flying fifteen people to a meeting. A significant carbon tax would do that, but add a big luxury tax on top. That still wouldn’t deter the mega rich.
Many utilities already have increasing rates for higher users. I’d raise that rate considerably, but use it subsidize solar and wind installations. If your huge mansion uses no electricity from the grid, I’m fine with it.
And while we’re making suggestions, next time you fly into LAX or San Jose (you probably won’t) look at the acres of flat building roofs that don’t have solar panels. That’s a real crime.
2
@Steve W
But what about the military's CO2 contribution ?
1
Guys, we're in an interglacial period, i.e. a period between ice ages. The last one ended about 12,000 years ago and Earth is warming up. This is distinct from the human impact on climate, although the latter adds to it.
In between ice ages there is (virtually) no permanent snow or ice on land. Glaciers WILL disappear, as will most of the icecaps. Snow doesn't exist for the purpose of skiing on it. This is a non-problem, live with it.
Put your energy and pity to work for the millions whose very lives are in danger because of living in areas that will be affected by surging seas.
4
@Rudy Flameng: Aren't we due for the interglacial period to end? Isn't 10,000 years more or less the norm?
If you look at the history of the Earth, it didn't always have ice ages followed by interglacials. I've wondered if they started when the sequestering of C02 finally crossed a threshold.
No, I'm not advocating for ignoring human-induced global warming. I'm just curious. That sequestered C02 is back in the ecosphere now, and it will be thousands of years before we know if the ice ages are truly a thing of the past.
2
@Rudy Flameng, This current interglacial period (the Holocene interglacial, which began at the end of the Pleistocene) is the longest one on record. Because the earth tilt that drives glaciation is still on track, by rights we should be at the beginning of a new glaciation. If anything, this process, which by now should actually be causing earth COOLING, may be moderating our current earth warming.
3
@Rudy Flameng - Guy, the Earth surface temperature during this current interglacial had been flat or cooling since Holocene temperatures peaked about 5,000 years ago. And as the article points out, as the glacial ice and snowpack rapidly flows down to raise sea levels, it's removing the stable water supply for many people.
Here's the useful cartoon chart of temperatures: https://xkcd.com/1732/
Quotes from a 2013 paper:
"Global temperature, therefore, has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past century, reversing the long-term cooling trend that began ~5000 yr B.P. "
"Climate models project that temperatures are likely to exceed the full distribution of Holocene warmth by 2100 for all versions of the temperature stack, regardless of the greenhouse gas emission scenario considered (excluding the year 2000 constant composition scenario, which has already been exceeded). "
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198
"A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years" Marcott et al, Science March 2013.
1
As an Oregonian, I'm concerned about the snowpack. Sure, I ski a few times a year.
But I can live without skiing. The real issue is water: the Rogue valley gets most of its water from the snowpack on Mt. McGloughlin, and our area is growing as people move from California. In addition to population growth, there are also burgeoning wine and marijuana industries.
If the snowpack disappears, where will our water come from?
13
@Scott Cole
We have plenty of water, but it's in the wrong form as a gas not a liquid. Massive shifts to condensing systems powered by renewables could save the industries in Oregon and California, but will take industrial sized shifts in thinking by political leaders and ordinary citizens. Energy storage systems at less than $250.00 per kilowatt hour by Energy Vault is key to massive water condensing systems. (See www.energyvault.com)
2
@Scott Cole: FYI: Between 1992 to 1994, my well on Griffin Creek Road went from 10 gallons a minute down to 2. I wonder if the next owner had to drill deeper.
1
@Scott Cole
As long as it still rains, you’ll have water, but you’ll have to build reservoirs to hold it.
1
Why would they want to save winter, you can ski (if that is so important) in other ways. Winter is damaging to so many, so I for one won't miss it if it ever is eliminated.
2
@vulcanalex. If there is no winter there is no snow. That equals no basic water for human consumption. That, I think you will miss.
2
The rich don’t like to ski any more than they like any other activity. What they truly love is to agglomerate with each other in frictionless environments that allow them to preen.
10
Ski resorts, and any lack of snow, are not going to drive any fix for climate problems. By the time snow fall becomes a problem for skiers, other issues on the planet will be much more prominent.
5
Glennmr- The argument presented is a tangible evidence that makes climate real for differing political sectors of our society. In a sense snow is the canary in the coal mine. Yes, this is a symptom of a much larger problem, but we have many symptoms now, and all are not created equal. If winter sports can be a unifying catalyst to some kind of awakening in red states to oust climate change deniers, then what’s presented is a brilliant call to action. Climate change is not a political belief but a scientific reality whether you believe it or not. This article is a fantastic framework for future action and discussions that can cross party lines.
6
@JCG MD
Actually, my point is that the tail won't wag the dog. Fossil fuels have only a few decades of viability completely independent of climate change. The infrastructure must be changed over the next 50 to 100 years as it would take that long to reduce dependence on the 450 quads of fossil energy that is used yearly.
Since the planet has started too late, and there is little emphasis on this issue overall, the problems of global warming are not going to be fixed by snow cover issues at ski resorts.
And there is no "belief" to climate science.
1
The very idea of a sustainable ski industry is preposterous. The entire structure of recreational skiing is built on fossil fuel consumption. Developing in the least accessible, most environmentally sensitive ecosystems, and then inviting the wealthy consumer to come and play is the perfect recipe for a massivly high carbon footprint and general environmental degradation. The consumer is encourged to drive or fly to these remote locations as often as they can, possibly even building a second home nearby. The carbon associated with getting to these sites, the associated rural sprawl, and the direct impact of ski area operations is their entire business model. The only way the make resort skiing sustainable is for it to go out of business as quickly as possible. By giving up this most unsustainable of pastimes, mabye these people can begin to make a difference in saving the planet for everyone else.
22
Harnessing the power and influence of the wealthy to affect climate change legislation to help preserve a favorite pastime of theirs is a brilliant idea. It is absolutely worth the current carbon footprint if it becomes a major driving force in changing our course on climate change policy.
If ski resorts perish, which other recreational industry favored by the rich has this perfect combination of influence, sheer number of participants, and undeniable realization that global warming is destroying their sport? Polo? Yachting? Formula 1 racing?
1
It seems unlikely that the 50 billionaires in Aspen have considered their carbon foot print when constructing their homes. The clientele of ski resorts with their gas guzzling autos and environmental unfriendly amenities too are a determent to the efforts of the ski industry to quell an environmental crisis. This article is oxymoronic; the industry that has contributed to the problem is
advocating for a solution. Is the effort truly environmentally altruistic or is it to save their corporate investment?
Snow sports, once recreational, is now an industry offering more than skiing/riding. The industry has created resorts that cater to the non skiers/riders with their eco non friendly restaurants, gift shops, lodging, condos, snow making, grooming. I appreciate the forward thinking of converting to green energy for operations, but more is needed. Starting with the protection of the land, stopping the overbuilding and the over development of the area. States and community voices need to be proactive in their stewardship of the land, not just for today’s profits but for a future investment.
11
I understand the author was trying for irony; rich people’s behavior destroys their favorite activity. But this is so ephemeral, so marginal, so unimportant in the larger picture. Climate change is global, coal power plants in Beijing and diesels in Germany and suvs in America are all part of the global problem. Period.
Rich people will simply do what they have always done, move on to something else. The world is littered with former elite baths, spas, vacation areas, grand hotels, resorts, etc. that became passé. Rich people go to places that are trendy (Iceland?) because for awhile other rich people go there. Until they don’t. By that point, the energetic travel industry has already flogged the locations to the millions of mid class travelers with, literally, no idea of where to go next. And the rich class sugar high becomes a mid class carb diet and the location becomes ugly, bloated with bad restaurants, blighted with souvenir shops.
Skiing will decline as a mid class activity, but will remain an activity for the truly wealthy and dedicated who can afford homes in, or travel to, a decreasing number of higher elevation ski runs.
24
Not mentioned are carbon emissions associated with getting to and from ski resorts, which by definition are far from population centers. In this sense, skiing is like golfing -- an activity fundamentally at odds with protecting the environment. We live in the Bay Area and ski often in Tahoe. We recently bought a Tesla despite not being able to afford it. But being passionate about both skiing and saving the world for our children, we felt there the only alternative was to give up the sport we love. Not everyone can stretch their budget for a Tesla, but the Chevy Bolt proves that long range affordable EVs are here. What's needed is more fast charging stations between metro areas and nearby results.
12
That would be the Chevy Volt and it's no longer in production. Not enough demand.
3
@baba ganoush
The Chevy Bolt is a newer car than the Volt. The Bolt is all electric and it is part of the future. The demand grows for all electric cars every minute.
3
Question: Is it the "rich" or is it the "poor" who contribute to climate change ?
The rich use airplanes both commercial and private to reach ski resorts throughout the country.
The rich insist on heated driveways, sidewalks, walkways, open door shops (in the winter) and 20-30,000 square foot houses.
The rich insist on having multiple SUVs, houses, planes and new fashionable clothing every ski season.
If the snow goes away, the rich will simply move on - to boats.
18
It’s harder to take the perils of climate change seriously when nuclear power is off the table. Climate change is either an emergency or it’s not, and it’s time to get rational about costs/benefits of of all power sources, including nuclear.
13
The snow pack in the Sierra Nevada's is above normal. Good news for skiers like me. Even better news is that climate models exaggerate expected warming caused by CO2 by as much as 45%. Also the additional CO2 in the atmosphere has resulted in an explosive growth of vegetation globally, up by between 25% and 50% over the last few decades. Good news all around.
6
@jaco Your source of information?
4
@jaco ...but the snow is much heavier and very often it is a "wintry mix" snow/rain...
1
@jaco
Every second of every day the C02 in the atmosphere increases the energy in the oceans by an amount equal to four nuclear bombs going off, or 18 times the use of all energy on earth. Can the delicate membrane we all depend on withstand this assault? I doubt it. Not good news all around. Not at all.
2
Over the years, it always struck me as a sad irony that all those avid skiing families racing up to the mountains on Friday nights in their large Suburbans, Navigators and Explorers were killing the sport they loved merely by displaying their passion to get to the hills as fast as they possibly could, 70, 80, 90 miles per hour. Then they would race back home equally as fast to get on with the rest of their lives, all the time driving more and more carbon-based nails into the coffin of their sport. I was and still am one of these people. I have an electric car now, but it's nothing I can drive through snow storms and over rutted, icy passes to get to my usual skiing destinations.
10
@Andrew Brengle
A friend I ski with, and ex Ski Patroler just bought a 4 wheel drive Tesla. He can drive his car up steep icy hills, and snow storms are no problem, with 4 snows mounted.
He will soon put solar panels on his garage, so he can charge his car at home from the sun. At the Hospital, where he works he has free charging for electric cars too.
1
A well written article, but I wish I had your faith in power of federal policy to meaningfully affect the process of climate change. In a market-driven society, I believe the most effective role we can play as individuals to mitigate the increase in greenhouse gas production is through the development of technologies that improve energy efficiency, at least for those of us in the fields of science and engineering. As a skier (downhill and cross-country) for over 40 years, the loss of snow cover with time is undeniable. My small contribution to reversing this trend has been the invention of economically attractive means to improve fuel efficiency and electrical transmission efficiency. Incremental changes, I know, but I believe that long term progress is more likely if it is driven by consumer preference rather than Washington mandates, which as we have all seen, are too easily rescinded or ignored.
2
If we turn everything off right now, the warming will go on. Man released CO2 is a driver on top of the long established interglacial warming that ended the last ice age and will continue until the next one. With no input from Man the seas will rise another 30-45 feet, the glaciers will continue to melt and the landscape will keep changing. Some deserts will grow, others will shrink and the coral reefs will move toward the poles. It has happened before many times and is happening now.
There are plenty of reasons to move away from fossil fuels, but saving the ski industry is hardly an important one. We can cover the globe with wind mills and solar panels and the warming will continue until the ice returns. In the grand scheme of things what Man does really isn't profound.
8
@Cal Morris
Actually we would be in a long-term cooling period if not for human caused global warming.
1
Why? I would love to say "because oil and gas turns peoples brains to mush", but that is not helpful. Therefore, I have to say most people want and need autonomy to make and evaluate their own choices and why not? Easy to persuade our highly educated selves no one can "prove" our minuscule individual practices and attitudes will affect our grandchildren adversely or not. A few neighbors put up insanely uneconomic solar photovoltaic power on their homes to show the grandkids they are trying to listen. A little over the top at $15k but much cheaper than that awesome SUV I use to get to the mountains,...eh?
6
How much money do you need to be considered rich?
I started skiing in 1970, my mom started in 1951 my dad in 1958.
We did this as a family growing up almost every winter weekend.
It was not a “rich” person’s sport for many years after I learned how to ski.
However, just like college tuition, skiing with MY family has become over priced and we can only afford a 3-5 days a year.
This is simply reflective of how our country has become more difficult for the middle class.
33
Some times you have to destroy some of the environment in or to save a larger part of it. The problem is that most people react negatively to that idea.
In Northern California this and last weekend with all the snow in the mountains, there has been a caravan of people heading up to go the now. Ski Season is in full pitch.
On Friday and again today (Sunday) there will be thousands of cars heading to and back from the mountains.
Years ago there was a push to build trains, electrified, to the mountain ski resorts and Lake Tahoe. The plan would require that people pay to drive up there if they did not take a train.
The howl and cry was far and wide. Mostly by the people who ski. It was also pushed back hard by "environmentalists" who whined about the trees, grading, and bridges it would take to do so.
I have ridden in trains in the Alps to a few places. Those trees, carved out hillsides, and the like done a 90 years ago have all healed themselves and the rail lines today look and feel as if they are part of the mountain.
The electrification hauling people, the lack of ground up rubber from tires, and the saving for 90 years of the gas to get to those places is a big deal. Electric cars still need asphalt and rubber.
The problem of global warming is the classic "Tragedy of the Commons". The problem is that it is going to become a "Greek Tragedy" as I see no way that the masses will take a short term hit for the long term good.
24
@JD
Except the least expensive energy is now solar/wind + gravity batteries which work 100% of the time in 100% of the world. So no "short term hit is needed" for that long term good. These new technologies beat the price of coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear.
Check out Energy Vault at www.energyvault.ch
The revolution is here.
Can we adopt these new technologies fast enough to
save the snow? Only time will tell.
1
All politics are local. At least in Utah, things are decidedly more complicated on the ground. The politics of skiing are entirely state and county politics. Washington DC has almost nothing to do with how we discuss climate change, the watershed, or skiing. What Rob Bishop thinks about our snow pack is besides the point. He's not a legitimate part of the conversation. If I called him or Chris Stewart on the phone, they would probably do the exact opposite of what I suggested because my zip code is Salt Lake City.
By the way, I've been to Outdoor Retailers many times. The National Monuments were the catalyst, not the cause, of OR's departure. They needed a bigger event space and Utah refused to build them one. There was an attempt for a compromised expansion to the Salt Palace but OR was never satisfied and it fell through. Bears Ears was a convenient messaging tactic to avoid criticism. Rob Bishop did them a favor. Also, OR attendees like holding conferences in states where marijuana and kegs are legal.
Even among locals, the resorts spark a furious debate. We've now failed three times to create a resort transportation plan that doesn't negatively impact conservation efforts along the Wasatch. A point strongly argued by backcountry skiers who don't rely on resorts at all. The resorts are lobbying against conservation so they can develop more land. The short term interest outweighs the longer impact of climate change.
This is only the tip of the iceberg too. I could go on.
10
@Andy
You wrote: "The short term interest outweighs the longer impact of climate change."
There it all is in a simple sentence.
Another way if saying is: I'll keep the gas guzzler(s) and let the kids worry about Miami Beach melting disappearing into the surf.
1
Sure the rich love skiing but this is just one of the many great options they can afford doing and most of us can't afford. Besides it is something they will lose in the future and not in the here and now.
3
A perennial vexation is also the warm spell that pops up through the course of a season. Every year the skier gets psyched with renewed optimism at a great snowstorm dumping a foot or two of snow up in the higher elevations, along with sustained cold temperatures to allow for supplemental snowmaking, only to see it all snatched away by a devastating week of sixty degree temperatures. After which mother nature might return with another well intentioned cold blast that only freezes up the resultant slush. Could happen right now as any snowy benefits from the last couple weeks along with the polar vortex get squandered by a punishing thaw this week.
5
Mr. Fox presents an interesting article. But we started feeling the impact of climate change decades ago, as farmland in places like Africa turned to desert, polar ice caps and glaciers melted, and we began to see much more extreme weather events, such as 2018's hurricanes and wild fires. Many thousands have died, including almost 3,000 Americans in Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
So if the loss of snow for skiing causes people to notice this problem and motivates them to act that's good, I guess. But the ability of people to ski seems to me to be a small consequence in what should be a worldwide battle for the quality of life across our planet.
15
The rich just want the benefits. They don’t want to do any of the work. That’s just for the little people to do.
13
As an outdoor enthusiast I can empathize with the author, and the statistics re: skiing are accurate and depressing. But irony is skiing second name; the cost, carbon burden, greed and exclusivity of resort skiing need to be mentioned. Ski industry Climate change advocacy and activism with preservation of snow pack as one outcome can certainly help, but preservation of the elite sport of skiing may not be taken seriously by most of the impoverished world.
13
Raising our children in Southern Vermont we were there when the local ski areas had that great epiphany; all of their customers were from out of state and the local kids could not afford to ski on their slopes. So they worked with the local schools to institute a winter sports program. Each Wednesday afternoon for ten weeks the elementary schools would shift the students up to the mountain for downhill skiing, snowboarding or cross country skiing. (Equipment was loaned out to most of the kids.) Skilled parents and teachers did the instruction.
So kids of all economic brackets experienced the lives a top 5% of earners' families. Some wound up as employees of course. Others went out into the world with those fond memories and respect for the environment. It is my guess that it will be our middle class kids in a collective effort that saves the day; I would bet on that over the wealthy stepping in to provide solutions and action on global warming.
I have met and worked with the wealthy; even two billionaires. Nice people but you get the feeling that no matter what happens they believe that there will always be access and opportunity for them at the end of the day; that they will be able to jet or copter to the last ski slope. Even if that slope is on a huge iceberg drifting down to Fiji... And that's true of the rising seas; they'll ride them out in their yacht or their submarine. The excessive heat or cold? Their fingers will control the last thermostat.
37
Rich people ultimately care about one thing: rich people. When it comes down to it, if you said pay more taxes to resolve this problem, they would balk. They are more interested in staying rich than anything one might find in nature. One need not look far to see evidence of this attitude: the president with strong support from republicans cut taxes on the wealthiest AND withdrew from the Paris accord. I hardly recall a peep from a rich person about this. In fact, they were cheering him on. Oh sure, there are a few, I suppose Mr. Fox is one of them, who will argue against these acts. They are like that string quartet playing on the Titanic - sounds beautiful but will change not one thing. Ultimately, most rich people don't care so much because they will have the means to get to that last remaining snow pack. They really don't care too much about the rest of us.
19
Expecting rich people to pay more taxes to make skiing accessible to the masses is delusional. The rich go where they can act and consume as rich people do; I.e. with other rich people. Why would they want the ski hills littered with plebs and proles?
1
So a sport that removes large swathes of trees, incites millions of people to drive/fly into otherwise pristine wooded areas-burning fossil fuels along the way, that is predominately practiced by a wealthy elite, is asking to be protected from climate change by the government?
Huh...that's the definition of "oblivious".
35
Lack of snow? Sure but also the greed of the ski barons. In the 70's a person could catch a bus with some other people ride all night to get to the ski area, ski for a couple of days sharing the room and then ride the bus home at night. It could cost as little as $150 dollars and that included ski tickets. Most people wore jeans and other stuff from home. We fixed our own food or splurged on fast food. We were welcomed at all the better resorts just like the wealthy. Try that today.
57
@Betsy Herring I agree! In the early 60's we would pile on a bus or in a van, with skis inside or lashed to the roof. Get a lift ticket - at student discount - for $35 at a basic mountain with narrow runs and a wood-stove cabin for heat. Pack our own food, and wear $5 overcoats from Goodwill, flying down the mountain (hill) that was a landfill. The best skiers, who could ski ice, had top equipment, and borrowed or discounted outfits. No style, but fun, and safe, for everyone.
8
@Betsy Herring & Citizen -- quite so. In 2019, everyone is a 'pro'—there's endless choices for accessorizing any hobby, like music or sports.
Are you starting guitar lessons? Then nothing less than a Fender Stratocaster will do as a first guitar.
Do you like to ride a bike? Then you must spend hundreds and thousands of dollars to obtain the top gear available to do it right.
The same applies to skiing. The idea that you can have fun on a shoestring budget has given away to industries that fetishize every endeavor into products designed for professional-minded perfection over simple enjoyment.
17
@Betsy Herring
You're off piste!! The subject was climate change, not culture change.
2
A look at numbers for skiing in the Adirondacks would be helpful. New York State is investing millions in the Lake Placid Olympic Region and throwing millions at the snowmobile industry - and is ignoring climate change while doing so.
Governor Cuomo is pushing a plan to turn the last 34 miles of the rail corridor that could connect Lake Placid to Amtrak at Utica, NY into a bike and snowmobile trail - and there are those who want to rip out the line all the way south to Old Forge, NY. 25% of US carbon emissions come from transportation; investing in rail would be one way to cut that.
Albany is a poster child for pay to play politics. The impact of the rich there should not be underestimated.
13
Well, the mega-rich who own timber frame mansions in Aspen, Vail and other ski resorts could stop flying in on private planes. One private flight can cancel out the effects of many other small steps taken by the masses. Could we focus on that for a minute?
70
@nora m: agreed. When the top 10% use 40% of our resources, we really need to get the rich on board whether they want to or not, perhaps it's time for some celebrity shaming?
1
@nora m How about a tax on jet fuel? Flying seems to be terrible for the environment. Does everybody on the planet have to visit Venice and Paris?
2
If we look back at the various climate change headlines of the past few years and also at the predictions of climate scientists over the same period, the most consistent element is the fact that all the predictions have been wrong, all too low and all too slow.
Climate change is happening faster than anyone predicted and as the cumulative sum of numerous non-linear feedback loops takes greater hold the pace will quicken even further. Skiing as a sport in the continental U.S. will almost certainly end in my lifetime and I am 61.
Short of a massive, coordinated global effort to cut carbon dioxide and methane emissions in every way possible in as short a time as possible, losing our ski areas is going to be the least of our worries.
Jonathan Penn
24
People with means often cultivate surroundings that positively reinforce their point of view, and exclude voices that question their behavior, or its impact on others. Empathy dies in the echo chamber.
Combine this with a contemporary business climate that focuses no further than quarterly leaps into the future, and you have a framework for denial that allows the wealthy to behave without any real thought to what their actions are doing to others.
The wealthy will let the world crumble and burn around them, while not quite connecting the dots back to themselves, and will resist any urge to do so.
Witness Davos, and endless panels on the problems of the world that apparently only need more "disruption" and philanthropy. Watch the videos of the wealthy ruling class recoil in horror and disgust the precious few times a speaker asks them to do the impossible: own their impact on the world and commit to systemic changes.
21
@Bill - "The wealthy will let the world crumble and burn around them, while not quite connecting the dots back to themselves, and will resist any urge to do so".
Please allow me to amend your statement: "(We all) will let the world crumble and burn around (us), while not quite connecting the dots back to (ourselves), and will resist any urge to do so".
here are dozens of things that we each could do to lighten our Carbon Footprints. But few of us do so…
8
@Miss Anne Thrope
You're right, of course.
But the very wealthy, the ones who buy and sell legislators, have led the climate-destruction charge, and they've done it for the worst reasons: cash.
Anyone professing surprise at the state of things is lying. We've had half a century of good information and reasonable, if not dead-on, descriptions of what has been coming.
If anything, science has been too conservative in its estimations. No doubt because living in a maelstrom of funding cuts, political calumny, and vicious personal attacks is not tenable or fun.
The rich do indeed bear far more responsibility than the rest of us.
7
I'm one of the guilty.
A passionate lover of all snow and ice-related sports, I maintain happiness and sanity by escaping to the wilds of Washington and British Columbia any time I can. This is what I live for.
But do I do enough to reflect my passion for enjoyment in a passion for protection? No. I drive myself to the mountain for a few hours of skiing. I leave the house at 6 to beat others to the limited parking spaces at Stevens Pass. Would I take the shuttle bus if it was free or cheap, and ski area parking was expensive? Yes I would, because it makes economic sense. Will I take the slow, inconvenient, and expensive shuttle that is available now? Umm...no.
My employer charges exorbitant prices for parking because it helps reduce car commuting. People grumble, and then they take the bus, or ride their bikes. If ski areas did the same, AND offered alternative transportation for those who cannot afford the parking, that would be a huge step.
As a European, I am upset at the low taxes I'm paying, which will never be enough to fund sufficient social and environmental programs. So I've decided to tax myself and support local environmental and outdoor organizations.
Time to write that check.
89
@Jule
The best part of your post comes with the last paragraph. As a European who understands the link between taxes and living conditions for all us, you have made a strong statement that is anathema to the GOP in general and the Koch network that funds it in particular. I applaud your civic awareness and willingness to be a contributor and not just a taker.
For decades my husband and I have recycled, owned one car, dried clothes on a line outside and in, and worked assiduously to have a very small carbon footprint. I figure every time a billionaire takes off in his private jet, every action we have taken is completely wiped out.
41
There is something about skiing in the right tony places that give one a snooty lift, even as the ski season itself goes down hill. Why worry about tomorrow as it never comes, like the sign for free beer "tomorrow."
There is a clarion wake-up call about climate, which everyone ought to be concerned about; preserving habitat for polar bears is in fact related to skiing for the rich. There bears do not have the means to be as resourceful as the environmentally dependent skier, but they are, in real time, going downhill together.
7
In "This Changes Everything" Naomi Klein persuasively argued that change must come from the bottom up. Moving the needle on climate change will only happen when the grass roots start to care and behave differently. I do wish the wealthy would put a high priority on projects for reducing climate change. But I think that instead of trying to attack the problem directly, the resources should be used to mobilize media to bring attention and create sense of urgency. Today is the SuperBowl. There should be major "advertising" infomercials on climate change!!! We need millions of people behaving differently, whether that's voting, choosing fuel efficient vehicles, reducing consumption of meat, ---- those behavior changes starting from the bottom up --- that's what will drive real change.
14
@Don Post
Ha! Agree, of course, but I am sure a full 50% of Superbowl commercials feature luxury cars, SUVs and other gas guzzlers. Of course, let's not leave out the phony patriotism and all the militarism that sets the tone just before kick-off. The total effect is that consumerism is patriotic, pal, so don't give us any downer climate science.
1
Planting trees won't help. Energy efficiency can reduce growth in global warming by maybe 15%. Electric cars and fuel cell cars won't be the answer either: the internal combustion engine is still the best answer to the small engine problem.
We have to reduce CO2 and ozone not just cut into the growth of pollution.
Engineers got us into this problem by building the world around us. Engineers can get us out but only if our society is empowered to commit to building conversion plants that can reverse the process. The technology is there. It only needs forceful political action to put it in motion. We have, perhaps, 5 more years before its too late. It will take 10 years to act.
9
@Rocketscientist - We, you and I, are the Fossil Fuel Addicts. We, you and I, "got us into this problem", not engineers. The only (slight) prayer we have is if we, you and I, dramatically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.
5
I ski and board at nearby Mt Snow, Vermont.
I go there in my electric car. There are 9 charging stations.
But on a weekend, right next to the electric cars are about 15 diesel buses that have their engines idling the entire time they're there.
36
@Roamic So here is a thought. Find out who is operating these buses and get them to turn off the engines. this is a bit of personal action that you can take in your own place. If everybody did this things would get better. In many places, grocery stores have reduced the use of plastic wrapping when demanded by customers. Plastic straws are being shamed out of the market. etc.
10
@Roamic
While it is outrageous that Diesel busses remain on, the fact remains that every bus that takes 50 people to a ski slope, instead of a single car (even electric) is saving quite a bit of energy. It took huge amounts of greenhouse gasses to manufacture your car, and unless you are using solar or wind, fossil fuels are charging your electric car.
8
@Roamic for what it's worth, and it's not worth much in the scheme of things I suppose, but diesel engines release a lot less CO2 and run more efficiently than gasoline engines on a pound for pound GHG emissions basis. So at least they're not gasoline engines idling there. Still, you are right that they shouldn't be idling after a few minutes. And believe it or not there are laws against idling in certain cities. (more for reasons of particulate matter aka soot, than anything) Boston is one. Not that anyone really pays attention. I knew the head of the Massachusetts environmental crimes strike force back in the 1990s. She used to tell me how she would knock on the doors of idling busses and tell the bus drivers to turn off their engines. They would laugh at her until she took out her badge and informed them that she would be contacting the company owners if they didn't turn off the keys by the count of 3. 1, 2.....thank you!
6
The significance of the ski industry participation in climate action is not their clientele. It is the enormous power the industry has in lobbying Congress. These are big revenue generators with big employment numbers. These companies can provide endorsements of The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act that will have an effect on Republican lawmakers. Conservatives don’t want to see those businesses lose revenue, or jobs, or stop generating sales tax.
All you skiers out there can write directly to the ski resort companies and your Members of Congress and ask them for endorsements. Also, join the Citizens Climate Lobby. We are going to get it done, and we need everyone to help!
9
The title of this editorial illustrates a recurring misconception about solutions to climate change. While it is definitely hypocritical for people whole fly in private jets to advocate for reduction in carbon emissions, it is also true that grounding all the private jets in the world will not help much. As the yellow vest protests in France illustrate, the economic costs of combating climate change will fall overwhelmingly on the non-rich. So it would be great for the rich to get behind saving our planet, but we need to focus a bit more on how save the planet without starving the non-rich.
12
For large scale environmental policy changes to occur, the voters must demand it because politicians respond best to what gets them re-elected. As many studies show, more educated, wealthier people are already more likely to support such policies. I’m an avid skier, and from conversations on the lift I think almost everyone there gets it.
The problem is convincing the rest of the electorate. I fail to see them having much sympathy for the relatively tiny ski industry and it’s well-to-do customers, which to them are just another example of their hated “elite”. I’m afraid that until global warming becomes painfully obvious to the average Joe and Jane voters in places like Ohio and Kentucky, nothing will change.
11
@Mman1
I agree
But, those in the 1% or top 10% have greater access to those elected than the grassroots. And they live all over the US, not often in the areas they ski.
3
So how come in Democrat majority areas like LA, SF, NYC or DC they aren't models for what should be done to combat climate change? Cities can move a lot faster than states on this matter but I don't see it happening. Getting 20-40% of your energy from solar and wind really isn't helpful in the big picture. Setting lofty goals that extend far beyond your political tenure is only a gimmick to get votes. What's the matter with Right Now? Ban cars right now, start sustainable energy projects right now, levy taxes right now. Since this affects everyone let's raise everyone's taxes. We all have skin in this game, climate affects everyone.
1
@Mman1
I blame the elected -- more than the electorate. Esp. Newt Gingrich -- apparently. (The Atlantic, Nov. 2018)
Obama's ADA was NOT single payer universal healthcare. The man was in thrall to the banksters. Ditto, Hillary and Goldman Sachs. (I am sorry that Romney did not get elected. The world would be different.)
1
Yes the snow is disappearing but less and less people are skiing. Part of the reason is the fact that the younger generations have less money to ski. The Boomers were the last generation to have the money to ski on a regular basis. Today younger generations do not have the funds to spend on the sport. Rising cost of lift tickets; cost of skiing gear and generally spending a day on the slopes makes it expensive. The younger generations today are the victims of changing social and economic norms. Instead of skiing they are using their money to pay for food; shelter; transportation and education. So much for the Republican Party's trickle down ecomony!
31
The "win-win" would be to promote the development of the new Green Economy, creating millions of well paying jobs and positively impacting the environment. This needs to be one of the pivotal issues for the 2020 debate, not just for skiers, but for all citizens.
4
“Of the 14.7 million skiers in this country, 67 percent attended college and more than half earn more than $75,000 a year. In Aspen and its surrounding environs, nearly 50 billionaires have homes.”
I’m not sure this is an advantage or a curse. Yes, these people have more clout (particularly the billionaires, obviously) in politics, but to the extent that today’s Party of Trump is fueled in large part by their perceived resentment of “coastal elites” (a broad-brush smear for anybody who doesn’t look and act like them) you’re not going to convince very many out of that 40% of the electorate who STILL support our so-called “president” and GOP Congressmen who are in lock-step with him.
Like Amy Roberts accurately points out, those of us who enjoy the outdoors are rarely as compartmentalized as “I ski at Aspen”—I was nordic skiing yesterday, helping blind skiers (Ski for Light) at our local nordic area. And I hike. And I mountain bike. And I fish. And I hunt. And so on.
To reach the broader populace, the argument must be expanded to include everybody who has a stake in outdoor activities of all types, but also any and all businesses that rely on a vibrant, healthy natural environment. I’m thinking hunters and guides (and the communities they support), as well as farmers, ranchers, and all the related business enterprises that we know are traditionally right-leaning, politically. Once you convince them, then we’ll start to see serious change in Washington, D.C.
11
@David Walker
Terrific comment. Linda Bean, of the LL Bean family, is a millionaire (or better) who was raised on wealth created by her grandfather's sports equipment factory store. That store still sells outdoor gear of all types, including snowboards and skis and all the paraphernalia that goes with it. You might think Linda would care about the environment that underpins her wealth. You would be mistaken. She is an arch-conservative.
5
@David Walker
Hunters in particular could not care less about the environment in France nor about their millions of hunting dogs living miserable lives in tiny cages filled with their ...., sometimes entirely in the dark for half a year at a time, and perhaps let out six or ten times a year, and then left without water or proper shelter during the hunt. In Brittany, hunters and farmers have killed off all the badgers, most foxes, all squirrels (literally, despite manifold oaks and hazelnuts and walnut trees); I have yet to see a hare, I've seen a few rabbits that escaped from the bio-farm up the road, and no pheasant nor quail (except odd strays from releases) - no lynx of course, and they kill the big boars, which leads to younger and younger pigs reproducing. Three ducks on an entire waterway. I have never seen a less oblivious population and I have lived in USA and Lebanon, too. If we all were to go by the disgusting mistreatment of nature and dogs by French hunters and farmers, let's just commit collective suicide. It's faster.
“I’ve been a skier for 45 years, and my passion for the sport has taken me to five continents.” ~ Porter Fox
Right here is the conundrum facing ski resorts and other snow dependent businesses and regions. According to the NYT piece, “Flying is bad for the Planet,” 11%of emissions from transportation are accounted for by the aviation industry.
The very resource that fuels snow dependent businesses - tourists - come from all over the country and world. Will the consumers themselves be willing to curb their behavior - or at the very least off set it - in order to save what they love for future generations?
9
It's very simple. Ski resorts exist to sell real estate. They fear if they spread anxiety about snow levels, property values will drop and new sales will dry up. One other thing: Resorts for decades have had an adversarial relationship with environmentalists who tried to block resort expansion.
23
True thought. Akin to golf courses. Before the era of Baby Boom wealth and low interest rates, ski areas catered more to: 9 am- drive up to parking lot, put on boots , lug skis to lift ; 4 pm do the same in reverse order. With the occasional thrifty lodging for a special extended ski experience. Nowadays, it is McMansions and valet condo lifestyles for the rich and leisurely. So you are right, the real estate and ancillary profit generators are paramount and hence the ski areas must stay open regardless of how many people ski or what the impact on environment is.
13
True. I remember x-country skiing behind the Mt. Washington Hotel (before it was renovated and decorated in corporate beige) and then -- no more!
All condos.
3
Exactly on point. Great comment.
1
Climate Change, Global warming, these are phrases that people use over and over to make themselves think they are concerned about the earth.
At the end of the day no one has been changing their daily life to help combat any suspected change in the environment. People do not leave their car at home and walk, ride a bike, or take the bus. People continue to consume as much as possible. We replace coal for gas, we say we buy energy from wind and solar farms. All of this is still consumption. Do you keep your heat set at 58 degrees and not use an air conditioner in the summer? Until we stop consuming we are contributing to this so called climate change.
I have lived just about all my life in a ski resort town. This talk is nothing new. It's just the same rhetoric over and over. I live in a world of heated driveways, sidewalks, outdoor fire pits, ski lifts that consume unbelievable amounts of energy. Over sized unoccupied homes that gobble massive amounts of power. How many refrigerators does one need?
I live in a land of frivolous waste. Don't ask why rich people or any people for that matter want to save winter until you take a walk with me.
46
@frank w - Bingo Frank! "It's Nobody's Fault But Mine" - Blind Willie Johnson
2
It ain’t about skier-days for the rich - it’s about fire, wind and drought for everyone. Ain’t enough Evian bottles in the back of the Land Rover for this one.
10
The cognitive dissonance of the rich is perplexing. It has been confounding me for years. Whether it be skiing, duck hunting, trout fishing or other outdoor activity that is dependent upon conservation and climatic factors, there seems to be an intentional disconnect between their desire to preserve or save a sport or a specific area, versus the big picture or larger existential threat.
My conclusion is that this is a willing ignorance or even arrogance that climate change will not effect them. That, they can preserve their closely controlled areas with their philanthropy, alliances and wealth. To address the root cause would be undermining their investments, relationships and force them to re-examine their entire life... How they make money, how they preserve their wealth, how their lifestyles impact the environment. I am sure there are plenty of reasons to rationalize.
Imagine if more wealthy folks did take the reigns and invested as much time in fighting climate change as they do funding organizations to deny it?
17
Regardless of the apparent economic station of the climate change denier – there seems to be more non-science supporting and non-critical thinking people than there are. Excluding those whom simply embrace a chosen political party line without thinking for themselves. Throughout history our pain has always been self-inflicted.
1
@Digital Ghost the conservative efforts to underfund and undermine public education is paying off in droves.
1
The 1% ers will pump every drop of clean water from the aquifer to freeze in the air to manufacture snow.
This will be advantageous to them because they will sell the polluted water back to us to drink.
Win win for the republicans and the ruling class that supports them.
8
You'd think the idea of increasing drought, forest fires, hurricanes, flooding, disappearing shorelines, dying oceans and massive extinction might motivate people. And it doesn't for either the majority of rich or poor in the developed economies. So it isn't surprising skiing isn't a motivator.
11
While we are worrying about those bourgeois vacation skiers, how about covering some other poor victims of climate change:
1. Canada goose retail stores;
2. Violent felons who will find it too hot to dress in parkas in April; and
3. Homeowners in Malibu and similar beach communities?
The risk to wealthy sport skiers is not the kind of danger that we need urgently insure against. Your focus on that injury, compared to the larger catastrophes that may await us, is a grave disservice to those of us making the case that we must take action on climate change as a matter of prudence.
8
@YW Your complaint is far fetched. The author's focus is on this group of people because they have the money and connections to actually make something change.
10
@Jamyang I would guess YW's comment was more intentionally hyperbolic to make a point, than far fetched.
1
On the plus side, as sea levels rise, the rich will have more places to sail their yachts!
11
@lauren
Presumably, by places, you mean bays, coves, and open ocean, because the land area is decreasing.
@lauren
And much more dangerous seas to motor (few are really sailors) them in.
1
Ok, I get it. Quite a few comments focused on how this author flew to five continents to ski and the resulting damage from his carbon footprint.
Let's not get caught in the weeds. Admittedly, all flying is problematic as our cars BUT the policies on the books(or not as is the case) will be what help mitigate the destruction of winter. Energy we use is number one.
I live in WY (from NYC) and find it so difficult to be in a red hot state that continues to act like coal is the answer. WY is the windiest state so why not wind turbines? Look to the nasty,retrograde thinkers like Liz Cheney to see the answer.
It is not entirely up to who we vote in but it is at least 80%. So get out and VOTE. See where the candidates stand on the planet and VOTE as if your life depended on it because it DOES.
162
I am not a skier and am aversive to any winter out door activity which explains where I live. However, for many years I was a diver. Both sports are not for the poor. They are expensive, equipment intensive and a % of a % of just the U.S. population alone are involved in them. Unless, you watch year by year the shrinking snows available or the dying reefs, it doesn't directly impact people as a whole. What do farmers in the midwest care about red tide? The impact of climate change has to be experienced by most of the population. Air so poluted that one cannot go outside. Childhood asthma rates that shoot through the roof. One's daily existence must require confrontative and continual difficulty for people to assess the environmental stance of political candidates in the same way they are assessed for the system of health care delivery the candidate espouses. When people are struggling to make ends meet working two and three jobs, the esoteric mumblings of climate change scientists that can be twisted by the politics of it all is not going to work. Sadly, people have to experience it in large doses in their daily lives. And just as sadly, that is when it may be too late.
40
As someone in the industry, even though the snow is not as good as it was 20 or 10 or even five years ago, there continue to be plenty of supporters of trump and republicans who practice party-line denial.
(Side notes -- the slopes of Aspen Mountain was where, in 1991, Marla Maples, who became trump's second wife, famously cheated with the married "president" who then had a public brawl with his then-wife, Ivana, on the slopes. Daughter Ivanka showed up here with her family two years ago and people were too polite to mention anything to her since they didn't want to spoil her vacation!)
trump supporters go along with trump and non-science even when it hurts them personally -- I guess that's the "base" and it even exists here in ski country.
23
So let me get this straight. Mr. Fox has skied on five continents, but is concerned about disappearing snowpack. I assume that Mr. Fox travels and flies frequently and extremely large distances to ski, yet he is unable to connect that this travel is what is destroying the snowpack. The recreation of skiing is contributing to the destruction of our atmosphere. The carbon footprint of skiers is enormous as evidenced by Mr. Fox's own account.
If Mr. Fox understood how much just one plane flight damages the atmosphere and reduces snowpack, he might give up skiing, but I somehow doubt it. He clearly doesn't get it.
17
@Sparky
For the life of me I don't understand this line of thinking.
It sounds like you're saying one can not be a public advocate for a cause without 100% ideological purity on the issue.
If that's true, we can have no advocates against climate change because everyone contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Would you agree with that?
8
@Sparky Soooo True! It's scarrrry. I heard that there were so many private jets at the Aspen Airport recently that they had to bring in "emergency" jet fuel so that they could all leave on "schedule". Jet into Aspen, ski for a few days and then jet back to NY, London, Tokyo or wherever. The carbon footprint per ski lift ride must be gigantic. Of course, most of the ski area workers have to commute to work since local housing disappeared long ago to be replaced by thousands of homes occupied for a few weeks each year. So, Good Luck Mr. Fox.
1
Congrats, Sparky, you identified an irony. Good for you. 99% of online commenters are obsessed with spotting irony. Guess what? Irony is a human condition. It doesn’t invalidate an idea itself. The fact that a person owns an iPhone does not, in and of itself, invalidate a criticism of capitalism. A smoker can genuinely hate smoking. Stop distracting from the ideas by focusing on the person who expresses them.
1
Why Can't Rich People Save Winter?
Rich people vote and work to protect their wealth.
AND Rich people are just as deluded as everyone else when it comes to climate change.
It will take increased taxes and a world-wide effort to to Save Winter.
Rich people get their wealth from many industries that are destroying the planet. (Oil, coal, plastics, to name a few).
27
Most rich people only care about one thing of course and it's their money. And they pay politicians mightily to protect it. Climate change regulations would cost corporations dearly which would affect rich people's pockets negatively. So politicians stay clear of these regulations in obedience to their best clients. Therefore they make no attempt to influence climate change. They simply go farther afield to find the snow that meets their habits.
6
Saying most rich people only care about money is an unhelpful stereotype. Coincidentally, I read this piece right after seeing on Facebook that my cousin and his wife are on a skiing vacation in Colorado this week. They are Midwestern farmers. They are good at it too which means they have enough money to travel a lot. (He got into it at the tail end of the era when farming could be a lucrative vocation.) To say that my cousin is unaware or doesn’t care about climate change is ludicrous. He’s been literally working with the results of climate conditions his whole life. These thorny ambiguities are what’s making it hard to move forward. Everyone is so sure they have everyone else pegged— It gets complicated when a liberal-voting, working farmer travels the globe and his son works for Boeing in Seattle. People are far more complicated than our comment section incapsulations paint them. And, because of these ambiguities, getting everyone on the same wavelength will probably be impossible.
4
Protect our drinking water. No snow upstate, no water downstate. I am concerned about a potential drought this summer in NYS.
$75,000 a year in income does not make a person, much less a family rich!
Interesting, desalinization plants may be very needed in the future, esp. if the population keeps increasing exponentially. And what's happening inland?
3
The fight for our climate relies on a global initiative which is not a lot of concern to people struggling on a day to day basis to just find enough food and water for their families. The wealthy and educated populations of the world have not come to the table and lip service doesn't accomplish a lot. Resolving the issues seem easy, but putting them into practice might mean a big change in our life style that involves giving up a lot of the carbon intensive practices that we all enjoy and take for granted. The end of snow is just another by-product of how 7.5 billion people are altering the planet. We are at the beginning stage of epochal change and things will get much, much worse before they get better....if they ever do. I am aware of my own carbon footprint which is higher than it should be, but when I look around, there are many that have no idea or care about the meaning of their own carbon footprint. We have to be responsible for our actions, and so far we are a long, long way away from understanding how to be responsible citizens of the environment.
3
@Bella
the people with the least care the most for our planet. the 1% think they can buy their personal way out of any catastrophe they create
1
This is indeed unfortunate for those that like to ski, and certainly climate change is a serious threat that must be dealt with, but I must say, as a resident of western Massachusetts, that right now less snow and milder winters are not altogether unappealing.
3
It is erroneous to think that reducing emissions will solve the problem. There’s already too much carbon out there and it sticks around. We’re adding 40 to 45 billion tons of it each year. Taming emissions might be a component of the solution but it’s time to think and talk seriously about ways to actively remove carbon from the environment. While we’re at it do you know that we’re rapidly running out of petroleum? We have all the incentives we need to change the energy paradigm but the same rich people described here would be financially hurt if the energy paradigm changed so they’ll go to Canada and other more northern countries to ski but they can’t be depended on to be part of the climate solution.
8
The title: "Why Can't Rich People Save Winter" made me laugh out loud. High on the list of things to reduce climate impacts, if ranked by their ratio of Impact to Difficulty is: Stop Eating Beef! And, anyone can do this, regardless of how much they earn. The demonizing of wealthy people is not helpful.
9
@me How is it that so many people such as yourself can't see the bigger picture. He is not demonizing wealthy people. He is trying to appeal to them to be part of the solution, by illustrating one way that their hobby can change to do its part. He then gives examples of ski resorts who have adopted energy reduction approaches. All good. There is not going to be a silver bullet solution. There will be many contributions large and small. He focuses on skiers because he is one of them, and they are more likely to have political clout than others.
6
@me - Beef cows consume more than 1000% more water (Yikes!) per pound of protein than poultry. If you think you must eat meat (hint, you don't), at least eat a chicken.
1
@me
because there is no such thing as agribusiness
1
Two missing items in the article: the change is so slow a vast majority of the public doesn't recognize it. Second, when will conservatives start supporting conservation of natural resources again? Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon were both examples but since then, the robber barons took over the party.
8
@tom yes and no, Tom. It isn’t happening slowly at all. I am an old lady who has lived long enough to see big changes both in England where I lived for 30 years and here in the USA. And those changes are coming faster and faster. I agree with your impatience with the conservative’s snail speed reaction. Please let it not be too late.
10
@cathy I, too, am old, and have seen it myself mostly from our own records of plant phenology, arrival dates for migratory birds, annual first sightings for butterfly species, etc. A recent trip to the gulf coast, we saw the same location 30 years later and a combination of sea level rise (data from gauges) and land subsidence (also a measurement) resulted in the shoreline moving inland by about 400 meters).
1
@tom
So true, so observant, Tom. Now we must help those who cannot see to see. probably from above to below and that means some real far reaching awakening.
1
I'm always dismayed by the amount of waste generated at ski chalets. Everywhere you look, garbage bins are overflowing with plastic cups, plastic utensils and styrofoam containers. Not a composting bin in sight. For people who are so passionate about the outdoors, we sure don't mind polluting it. The disconnect is staggering.
How about bringing containers, forks and knives from home? And lobbying our ski clubs to switch to reusables?
Applying political pressure to make legislative changes is great. But let's not forget about the individual waste we leave behind at the hill, all because we just can't be bothered to do better.
53
@L They're like ranchers.
1
@L
Here and there and everywhere!
1
Opposing "efforts to slow or stop climate change" is not the same as opposing climate change. Rather, the politicians mentioned are probably just aware enough to know that "efforts" need to be effective, not just well intentioned, if their imposition will cause economic harm to the people they represent. Unless we expect less fortunate countries who do not have a "skier class" to shackle their immediate needs for economic development, nothing we can do will substantially reduce the rate of climate change.
1
@Southern Man
china ,USA, India, russia, Japan, Germany, Iran, saudia arabia, S. Korea, and Canada are the top ten co2 polluters. Seven of those countries are petroleum or coal producers.
Nations in need of economic are not following us down that dirty road and are basing their development on wind and solar.
We all need to drive less and cut back on our meat and dairy consumption.
1
I think it's fair to say that shrinking recreational snow pack is not sufficient to motivate the self and portfolio-absorbed rich.
You'd need to link the snow melt to their portfolios.
30
I grew up skiing every weekend during the winter in the Pocono mountains when I was in high school (early 80’s) and after I graduated I moved to Colorado. I enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities, but skiing and snowboarding are by far my favorite. I took my son skiing and I don’t know if I happy or sad that he did not like it. Sad because it was such a big part of my life that I would love to share with him, but a big part of me is happy because I really can’t afford to take my family skiing. Perhaps more people would care about falling snow amounts if the middle class wasn’t priced out of skiing.
29
@rob. Same here. I have to resort to all kinds of tricks to avoid the $150 lift tickets, expensive equipment and overpriced food. Ruined it for working class families. How short sighted to perpetuate the sport.
5
@rob There is skiing where I live, but no way can I afford to take my nieces and nephews. $50 lift tickets are way out of my budget for me and 5 kids.
These would be consider garbage slopes that true ski aficionados would never waste their skis on.
Not really feeling in for the ski industry. When the starting point for a family of 4 weekend is $200, it's hardly an inclusive sport.
2
There used to be a sport on Long Island called ice boating and we built “shingles” in shop class at school with three sharpened angle irons on the bottom and a sail. But the bay doesn’t freeze anymore. The rich don’t really care.
10
And in our nanny land, you would probably be chased off the ice by DHS. Even when the ice freezes her on LI, you cannot find a pond to skate on. You would be trespassing or worse.
1
I've been skiing at Berkshire East for close to 40 years. I was there on Friday and the skiing was wonderful. We've had about 2 foot of natural snow this winter, and plenty of rain. Yet, thanks to their wind turbine and solar panel field, Berkshire East has had consistently good conditions. But these are just stop gap measures. Besides abundant free electricity and plenty of available water, snow making needs lots of days and nights of below freezing temperatures. And something else the ski industry needs is more snow in urban areas. When there is no snow in urban and suburban areas, the people there just don't think about skiing.
7
@R.F. Please don't reveal this jewel of a mountain to the masses. Was there yesterday; best conditions of the year!
1
Don't worry there's a capitalist solution. Raise ticket prices at the few remaining slopes. The billionaires can keep skiing in the most exclusive places, while the rest of us fight for gasoline in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
14
one missing ingredient in the article is the fact that ski resorts are businesses... and unfortunately the politicians that are strongly pro environment tend to be anti business. fix that problem, and only then will businesses rally behind pro environment candidates.
4
Last winter there was so much snow at Mount Snow in Vermont that the owners roped off the sides of the trails because it was simply too deep to navigate.
1
@M
That snowfall, is just a snapshot of a short period of time and in no way reflects long term trends.
Having skied in New England since the 1960’s when there was little or no snow making, old timers like us can remember many winters that would make last years snow totals seem pretty average.
Now, without snow making, recreational skiing in New England at ski areas, would not exist. The irony is that the ski industry is creating an ever larger carbon footprint in order to survive in a world being overheated by that carbon.
28
@Ben I have skied since the early 1970's, mostly New England. The past two seasons at Mt. Snow saw monster snowfalls. Huge dumps of dry powder, the likes of which I have seen, on and off, over nearly 50 years of enjoying New England winters. The skiing was fabulous. I did not ski anywhere else over the past two years so I cannot comment on other resorts. I don't know the first thing about climate change/warming etc. but my AWD sedan got stuck last year in Dover VT. because they ran out of places to bulldoze the powder.
1
@m
Please don’t disregard actual facts from the scientific community about global warming trends, all because you experienced snow last year at a ski area. This is dangerous thinking.
1
Let's stop referring to this as climate change and call it what it really is; "Global Warming." Focus groups found that people find the term global warming too scary and that climate change doesn't sound so bad. So let's scare the 99% of us into politically action to demand policies to work on and reverse(??) global warming. The 1%; what will they do when there is not enough snow to ski? They will look for snow guns; but then what will they do when our most sacred of resources, Water, is diminishing and it cannot be used for making snow? As the global warming denier in the White House says... sad, very sad.
10
@Linda, I believe you missed the point. The initial change is GLOBAL WARMING caused by the greenhouse effect due to increases of gasses like CO2 and methane in the atmosphere. This is far more dramatic in the oceans and in the arctic. It is because of this global warming that we have GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE - for reasons too numerous to go into here.
1
@Linda
global warming is only a phase of climate change.
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2017/06/06/could-climate-change-shut-down-the-gulf-stream/
1
@Linda
It IS 'climate change'. What we can expect to (and have recently been seeing) is more extremes of weather in EVERY direction : more heat, more cold, more wet, more dry, more wind, more doldrums, more flooding, more fires, more storms.The day is coming (maybe very soon) when annual agriculture as it is practiced today and which feeds the world, may no longer be possible in many areas.
THAT is when even 'the rich' will wake up !
1
The winter sports industry is lagging behind, then. Because the insurance industry has figured global climate change into their rates and forecasts, and global winemakers are changing the kinds of grapes they plant.
When the farmers and insurers are looking at change, it's long past time for the rest to wise up. They are not usually known for their liberal tendencies.
How do you get people to believe not just that the snow is going, but that it will kill the California farming industry? Or that Arizona will have a pretty hard time growing lettuce when the aquifer quits on them?
Yes, it would be nice if the rich, sporting types would get involved. But frankly, all of the data - all of it - is available now. We have ostriches with their heads in the sand in Washington. And good news: with the change in climate, we can expect more sand for them to hide in.
16
Using paper straws, canvas tote bags and low flush toilets won’t change the climate. Driving electric cars, paying a carbon tax, and installing solar panels on your mansion won’t either. The climate is changing, probably due partly but probably not solely, to human activity. The last ice age ended 12,000 years ago - a blink of the eye - when ice sheets permanently covered Manhattan and Long Island Sound was dry. Big change since then and we adapted. It’s a combination of folly, hubris and nincompoopery to believe that we should change how people live to stop what probably can’t be stopped anyway. We need to heat our homes in the winter, cool them in the summer, fly see grandma in Palm Springs twice a year, and have the luxury of being able to carry our groceries home even if we forgot our virtue bags. The real solution is that we adapt. As we always have. Without giving up on the technologies that make our lives as humans wonderful.
9
Bravo, you contradict yourself so excellently. At the top you say, ‘don’t bother adjusting , there is no hope to forestall the inevitable’ ; later below you say, ‘let’s just adapt as we’ve always done, that will absolve/ end the danger’.
2
@Chris Shipman: Totally agree. I, for one, look forward to having 3-4 billion fewer people on the planet after the Great Resource War has run its course. Not to mention, vacations to the equatorial regions have always been overrated, and trips to exciting New Antarctica City will more than make up for the loss.
3
When the revolution happens, who you think they go after first ? The ones who been hogging up the resources, I fear. Those smug, wealthy climate deniers who are not ensconced in New Zealand will have the barbarians at their gated homes then.
1
Great article. Yes, all those second (and third) huge homes gobbling up heating oil while sitting empty most of the time. And you have to drive SUV's in snow country. And buy lots of fur and down coats and pre made food with lots of packaging. And remodel or tear down to make sure it's curated in your mind's eye. Bigger and more is better. At the ski area or 60 miles outside of NYC, Boston, San Fran. etc. Who has time to think about the climate? When it's done, its done, move on, because Buddhism.
10
Trump’s uber-wealthy children probably ski, but except for golfing on his carefully manicured courses, anything that involves being in “the great outdoors” or pristine wilderness appears to be of little interest to him, except of course for the mining, drilling, felling and building opportunities they represent.
The only connection I can see between this administration and the skiing “economy” is that both are “going downhill.”
13
@Susan
unless they are hunting and killing endangered species
1
I'm reading this article as I sit in my ski clothes, getting ready to go out cross country skiing. Cross country (XC) skiing is even more affected by the shorter season than downhill, as the XC places don't produce artificial snow.
If this article puts pressure on people to lobby for desperately needed changes, I'm all for it.
But at the end of the day, what terrifies me about climate change is not the loss of skiing. It's the increased volatility in the weather, including polar vortexes, more frequent and larger hurricanes, forest fires,.... And mass starvation and wars caused by drought.
69
The Koch Brothers are firmly and adamantly against climate change. They fund many congressional campaigns and expect that money to buy silence from the (mostly) Republicans who take it. They are not alone. Those who own oil, gas, coal and are billionaires because of it will do everything they can to discredit global warming. After all, they can go ski in Dubai now.
The climate should not ever have been a political issue. That it is is disgusting. Even the 1% breathe the air. But, no, the "base" thinks its a hoax because the POTUS says so and FOX agrees, so they let the nay-sayers get elected. I agree with Mr. Will Eigo (here)
I would mark this petition along with excessive water usage for exclusive, private golf resorts and fuel for yachts/ speedboats as a bridge too far to ask the elites to cross.
I would add that they could sell one or two of their multiple homes and yachts, give up their Mar-A-Lago memberships and stop shopping for $200,000 cars. Suuure!
Generally, you do not become a billionaire for the same reasons that someone becomes a priest or a musician or a nurse. You do so because making a lot of money is your primary goal. How many of the congressional people in this article are not at least millionaires? And there's the rub.
It would be great if these folks cared enough about good skiing and snow to become climate activists but don't hold your breath.
15
I'm not a skier but the change in climate is undeniable to anyone over the age of 50 regardless of what they say in public. Unfortunately we are past the point where simply reducing carbon footprint will save the earth from repeated climate change related catastrophes on a large scale. Only some as yet unknown scientific/engineering intervention on a worldwide scale will suffice.
7
@Dan Broe
Actually a known factor stares us in the face each day - it's called preservation of nature and wildlife. Stop eating meat except rarely - insist on animal welfare in the agroindustrial sector and prices will rise, and most of us will be forced into a realistic and more healthy food consumption. The latter (far more vegetarians) would decrease the CO2 output by 18% on a planetary scale. Stop using pesticides (estrogenic, anyway, not great for men) and herbicides; go wild in gardens/balconies and help butterflies and bees and other insects, which increases bird populations - which improves soil conditions - and flowering crops - a current study shows that one-third flower coverage between field crops prevents pest outbreaks. All of these factors add up to significant carbon sinks. Our current agricultural set-up is madness; and intensive (organic) agriculture can be done with more people - as robots take factory jobs, rural areas need people. Through the ages, it has not been crop output that is the problem; it's storage and distribution.
8
A lot of small steps in the right direction, but blind politicians like those at present in charge of the US need to be pushed off the precipice in order to make anything happen. People have to be clear that the time for cautious shuffling of feet is past: Without determined strides forward any change will come too late. If, like me, you already have grandchildren, you should be shouting out against the complacency of the many and against the greed of the few.
7
Interesting article. When the Uber Wealthy want to ski, they go anywhere in the world. I have little hope that they will be the ones to lead any charge against the carbon poisoning of our planet. Nor will yachtsmen clean our filthy oceans. Nor will construction tycoons fight neighborhood killing wild fires.
The ridiculously rich just got a big tax cut and they’re smiling from ear to ear. The money we could use to save ourselves is safely tucked away in their cavernous pockets.
Maybe they’ve found a way to live without fresh water and oxygen, or to ski when all the snow is gone, and they’re just not telling us. In any event, all signs I see point to new efforts to extradite themselves from any taxation at all.
They’re not going to help. I say, let them eat snow...at ever higher elevations.
20
They are gonna go to 1% land aka New Zealand. An enclave of politically connected, ultra-wealthy will migrate to their safe haven. They will have aircraft, banks, a Coast Guard, a government and international alliances they find convenient.
2
Well, there’s about 112 - 227cm of snow from base to summit in Davos. That’s equivalent to about 4 to 7.5 feet of powder. That might explain, in part, why some of the 1% don’t see a need to curb their private jet flights, stop wasting resources, curtail the use of fossil fuels and give up their profligate lifestyles. But, the conditions at Davos give false hope.
The canary in the proverbial coal mine is the speed with which the ice caps are melting. Coupled with the release of methane from melting permafrost in Siberia and higher emissions of greenhouse gases, the conditions on our planet are rapidly deteriorating and it is tangible (e.g., more wild swings in climate, higher water levels and warmer oceans, bleached coral reefs, wild fire fueled by dry tinder, etc.).
As Wayne Gretzky said, “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been.” With about 70% of Americans now believing that global climate change exists and is a threat, it’s time that our leaders concertedly address the issue as the existential challenge it truly is.
14
I weigh in as a skier and finance guy who cares about climate change The ski industry is bizarre. I find it curious, I don’t understand it well enough. Look at how lamentable is the drop in participation yet lift tickets at commuter ski areas ( for the common Joe Ski Fan ) near Denver LA and Salt Lake City ABOVE $150 per day ?! Not to mention the price of food, lodging and equipment etc. Age demographics and bifurcated middle income economy affect the industry so it has gone elite. I don’t think this article or the issue will have any affect on the elites. Even as one post made clear, the article’s author’s carbon footprint to reach ski areas is remarkable. I would mark this petition along with excessive water usage for exclusive, private golf resorts and fuel for yachts/ speedboats as a bridge too far to ask the elites to cross.
41
@Will Eigo - The numbers of snowsports participants have been in decline for decades and skier visits have been flat. Ski resorts have continued to increase revenues (more or less, depending on the resort and the year) by selling more season passes, raising prices of day tickets/lodging and selling $40 burgers. As a result, they sacrifice growing their industry among the hoi polloi for growing this quarter's revenues. It's all spelled out in Vail Resorts annual reports.
4
@Will Eigo
Because the 1% ers don't want the huddled masses breathing their rarified air.
1
The ever-increasing price of lift tickets is probably in part designed to get us to buy season passes. And those season passes are also climbing quickly. I have been buying an Epic pass for a few years but they are hiking prices so high I will likely skip it next year and just look for room/lift bundled deals.
I think the resorts have only been able to get away with price hikes because the economy has had 8 or 9 years of growth.
As the stock market falters, luxury real estate, jets, timeshares and lift ticket purchases will feel the impact. After the dot-com crash I was able to buy timeshares at 20 cents on the dollar.
1
Ah, the environment and going green. We could save tremendous amounts of energy by enforcing the speed limit at 55, turning down thermostats, shutting off lights and NOT Building/expanding cities in the deserts as in CA, AZ, NM and AZ, but all we talk about is "building" solar and wind. Conservation is inexpensive and effective from Day 1.
16
If loss of skiing gets the attention of the moneyed class, I'm all for it. And agree, the politicians who are too stupid and compromised to protect their state's natural assets should be booted out of office. More than shorter skiing seasons, however, we need to face the fact that there will be less snow and the glaciers are melting and won't be coming back. That's a problem for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on these as water sources. I hope the wake-up call is coming fast as we all need to participate in solutions to slow climate change and reduce our damage.
12
Sounds like skiing and snowmobiling and associated activities are part of the problem, not the solution. Surely the first step is to abandon snowmaking, even using renewable electricity.
3
Maine doesn't have a ski industry like the West.
But it does have a $350 million per year or more snowmobile industry with 14,000 miles of trails used by at least 800,000 registered snowmobile.
Snowmobiling is not a rich man's sport, quite the contrary, however equipment costs can be significant. Many drive large pick-up trucks that haul 2-4 sleds on trailers throughout the state.
Both the sleds and the trucks that haul them run on petroleum products of various kinds.
So, why can't middle class people save winter? Perhaps, they are not interested.
82
@Fred It's the same in the Upper Penisula of Michigan. We just had the 51-st annual I-500 snowmobile race in our town yesterday....500 miles on a 1-mile oval track. So it is a big industry. But I think the problem is still education vs. mis-information. Too many people still can't distinguish between weather and climate. The graphic in the article showing the decline in snow cover at ski areas is excellent... a 30 yr time scale. Wish I could somehow just post that graphic on my Facebook page, but can't seem to make it work.
12
Alpine skiing needs to solve its cost problem first. Only the very wealthy can afford to alpine ski anymore. Nordic skiing is far less expensive and does not require such a time commitment for each outing. Plus you actually get to experience nature.
5
@Mister Ed
Contributing to the high cost of alpine skiing is snowmaking which is necessitated by the rising temperatures this article is talking about. Nordic skiing is also being hurt by global warming in my neck of the woods.
And suggesting that Nordic skiing is a substitute for alpine skiing is not a rational solution. Very different sports.
5
@Mister Ed. Get Wilbur on some cross country skis and he won’t buy an expensive lift ticket, wait in line, get cold riding up the mountain, crash and get hurt or be run into coming down, but he will still enjoy the views, fresh air and workout.
1
The answer to the question posed here is that it is cheaper to build new slopes in the Northwest Territories, Siberia and elsewhere above the Arctic Circle than it is to solve climate change. And the wealthy are always motivated to conserve their wealth.
10
I don't see that CO2 emissions are a factor in vehicle choice when I visit ski areas. There are still loads of big SUVs and trucks. It's a bit weird seeing a P.O.W. sticker on a new, big, AWD SUV. I have a plug-in hybrid and it's possible for me to go to a ski area on all electricity.
21
Everyone is an environmentalist. It's just that some people don't realize it yet.
10
Nathaniel Rich's excellent piece in the NYT magazine highlighted the central role played by notorious climate change denier - and former governor of NH - John Sununu, in blocking a critical UN climate treaty under Bush 41 that could have set the world on a dramatically better climate trajectory. Winter sports, and skiing in particular, generates over $1bn annually to the state of NH. John's calamitous legacy continues in the form of his climate change denying son, current NH governor Chris Sununu. Somehow the disconnect persists with voters in ski country.
249
@James, I just don't understand how these people, vis a vis Sununu keep getting elected. What is he promising the voters, in NH or Michigan with the calamitous Snyder, or Kansas? I just don't get it. I don't. It truly makes my head explode.
1
You do know that if humanity were serious about fighting climate change, the entire airline economy would be mothballed. Visiting 5 continents to ski did a lot of damage.
195
@Djt
I'd have to say that air travel is a huge challenge. It can be addressed in theory, and there are efforts being made in terms of efficiency and renewable energy.
But for now, even though I'm 70 and live in Montana, I commute to work by bike and foot and can go weeks without seeing the inside of a car, my daughter married a Dutchman. One flight to see my grandchildren outweighs all my biking and walking (which of course is not wasted and is great exercise).
This underscores why we need large-scale changes as well as changes in individual behavior. That's also why there's no particular hypocrisy in flying to a climate conference.
13
@Djt
I noticed that as well.
2
An entire long article, and not a single mention of nuclear, the only zero emission, concentrated large scale source of electricity, beside hydro-electric, which is limited in its sources, as well as by other environmental concerns. Engineers and scientists have vouched for modern designs, which can limit the amounts of waste. Even with old technology, there has never been a nuclear accident in the United States, including Three Mile Island, where there was a dangerous release of radiation. Over a quarter of our energy already comes from nuclear- all of it emission free. New breeder reactors can reprocess fuel and greatly reduce the amount of waste. France gets eighty percent of its power from nuclear sources. Of course, if you place plants in the path of a tsunami or on geological faults, bad things can happen. A little foresight and technical expertise is what's needed. That and curing the left's nuclear derangement syndrome.
43
@Robert Levine
I agree 100%. Nuclear could solve almost all of our problems. It is safe. It works. I see the waste issue as being something that can be solved. We have coal ash all over the place. That is far worse in my mind.
Thanks
11
@Robert Levine
As long as you don't mind the mutation load on future generations, but who cares, lethal recessives show in nine generations, way past the moral horizons of the folks at Bechtel and Westinghouse - and the astonishing amounts of leaking radioactive waste in the oceans have been enough to map deep ocean currents; plus nuclear plant accidents like Fukuchina have made seaweed radioactive and fish even more so. Chernobyl and the nuclear accidents in the Ukraine are forgotten. Nuclear explosions of 1952-1954 emitted enormous amounts of radioactive iodine and a much higher proportion of the population now have thyroid problems. The earth and living material do not differentiate between military and civilian radionuclides; their effect is cumulative, even synergistic, on health and reproductive output now and in the future. People consistently ignore/underestimate the sub-lethal effects of ionizing radiation, and they forget that the average lifespan of a nuclear power plant is only 30 years, after which one has the problem of disposing the equivalent of a small sun - somewhere - and there are only so many deep salt mines. I realize biology teachers are lousy at teaching genetics, but DNA is rather essential in this discussion and it is rarely mentioned, nor are other public health concerns. That is not a 'left' syndrome; apparently, radiation biology is too boring for nuclear engineers and supporters of nuclear energy.
11
@Vilken
Without serious action on climate change, of which nuclear energy is only one item, it will matter little if there are glowing pits of radioactive material in Nevada 10,000 years from now.
6
Given that the wealthy pursue consumption very often as a signal of status, the project here seems dubious at best.
A dwindling supply of good skiing locations would be a plus, not a negative. It would increase the status of being able to say one is taking a ski trip.
The fact that the dwindling supply is indicative of global catastrophe does not enter the calculations of the wealthy consumer. Rarity is all, and proof of value.
14
I used to ski at Mountain Creek in New Jersey, which had facilities good enough to hold the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix in 2004 and 2005. It was clear, though, that its days as a ski resort were numbered.
I enjoy skiing. I drive to the locations where I ski, and typically in a vehicle large enough to hold everyone’s equipment.
I am also willing to pay for this pleasure, and I strongly support the application of a carbon tax. I want to see the costs attributed fairly, and to see more money spent on carbon-reduction technology.
I suspect that most people who genuinely enjoy an outdoor life are willing to be called to account - so long as others are too, and that we start with the loudest and most sanctimonious of the moral posers.
13
Whatever you do, please do not lump cross-country skiers in with the downhill types. Cross country skiing requires very little use of fossil fuels(no ski lifts) and is considered the best winter sport for aerobic fitness. It can also safely be done by people of all ages.
My home ski center is the non-profit Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Craftsbury Vermont. This is one of the top centers in the world. The U.S. National Championships were held there two weeks ago and this weekend is the largest cross-country ski marathon in the Eastern U.S.
The center relies on natural snow that is groomed and there is no need for snow making every night (you actually do not want deep powder for cross country).
In fact, instead of snow making Craftsbury is experimenting with "snow saving." Pioneered in Europe this is the process of taking deep snow in February and March and covering it with a variety of materials (include sawdust and reflective tarps) and saving that snow for next November. So that the center can open some trails even if there is no snow. It is remarkable.
The center is also solar-powered, uses high-tech composting toilets, and works with local landowners to route the trails through farms and fields that will be used for food production in the Spring and Summer.
And as for cost, well this is truly the sport of the people. A day pass is $10. And a pass for the full season is only $75. Less than the cost of a one-day lift ticket on a mountain.
317
@David
I would assume that your travel, as well as whatever support you buy at your ski destination is many many times greater than the amount of electricity used to lift a single skier for a day — or a ski season.
4
@Tom Clifford That is a seriously flawed argument. The energy used to cut the trail, the trees eliminated (a carbon sink) on the trail, and the tons of steel used in each of the dozens of not hundreds of towers supporting the lift requires staggering amounts of energy. Then there's the lift itself, with either seats or gondolas, a very heavy drawn steel cable, the motors, the cable pulleys, and the massive counterweight used to keep the cables at proper tension. Each of them requires a huge amount of energy. And of course, those hundreds of tons of steel didn't drag themselves up the mountain, they had to be delivered by very heavy machinery.
55
@Tom
I live within 15 miles of the ski center. And since I can get there on back roads I travel at a fuel efficient 40 miles per hour.
You mentioned support at the destination? There are beautiful accommodations at the Craftsbury ski center (of course I don't stay there since I live so close) but as I said the place is solar powered and is renowned for being innovative and eco-friendly and for using local organic food on the menu.
The bottom line is that I moved to Vermont because I wanted to ski. Then I moved from Burlington even closer to the cross country ski areas, lakes, mountains, etc. so I did not have to drive much in any season.
I am typical of cross country skiers that I have known.
We tend to move to where the snow is and the trails are...when I worked in the U.P of Michigan we skied for an hour every lunch break and then ate a quick lunch at our desks.
And let me point out that Cross country skiers are not rich. In 15 years I haven't met a single millionaire. You see in this sport you have to ski up the hills as well as down... and of course it is not glamorous or trendy.
I may also mention that accidents are exceedingly rare. It is pretty uncommon to even fall down once you are experienced (even though you can get some good speed on short steep downhills).
There are many cross country skiers in their 60s 70s and even 80s still enjoying themselves immensely. (And seniors and students pay just $5 instead of $10). Come try it...all are welcome!
49
"“It’s time to do it. Better late than never.”"
I hope so. But while it is good to see some industries finally taking the problem seriously, just remember the fossil fuel industry and auto industry are on the other. Interesting to note, they saw this coming decades ago. In response, they created the disinformation campaign that leaves where we are today. On board a runaway "beautifully-coal-powered" train heading for the edge of the last iceberg while the orange head tweets how "tremendous" everything is. A+ for sure.
14
The snowpack in California's High Sierra mountains has already surpassed the "normal" range for the entire year.
1
@Registered Independent Yes, thankfully. And, we're due for three more days of rain!
2
@Registered Independent
For the first time in a while. Certainly, we've been able to reach even average only every few years.
11
@Registered Independent
Lakes Mead and Powell combined are exactly forty percent full today.
Overuse is part of the problem, but long term low snowpack coupled with increased evapotranspiration have played a significant role in this decline in stores water.
I see you are from California — a lower basin state. I guess you aren’t worried about your state’s water supply?
You should be.
1
Wish the travel & hospitality industry had a stronger lobby. In that case, we'd all have four weeks guaranteed paid vacation, which would benefit everyone's mental health.
48
In this country a lot of people who ski are rich. A lot of people who are rich are Republicans. A lot of Republicans are climate change deniers and/or are linked to industries that are accelerating climate change. It's an unfair accusation of guilt by association, I know. But we human beings are social creatures, and the overlap here among these groups does not give me confidence that the skiing community, broadly speaking, is going to lead the charge for legislation that would save its own venues. A related problem is that if you're wealthy enough, you are confident, at some level, that you can buy your way out of any problem, including global warming. I predict the next Aspens will be in northern Canada and northern Russia.
49
@Larry
Only 33% of the top 1% are Republicans, and only 39% identify as conservative.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/151310/u.s.-republican-not-conservative.aspx
The problem isn't "them". When we look to blame "them", we are usually abdicating our own responsibility.
24
Quite a week in the NYT for the 2nd most abundant infrared-absorbing gas, CO2, in that it has been held responsible for too much heat, too little heat, too much rain, too little rain, too much snow, and too little snow. I’d invite the author to come ski with me at my home mountain tomorrow but with the highways closed and a windchill forecast of -45C I don’t like his chances.
5
@JFB If you are attempting to suggest H2O is the most IR absorbing gas, you are making a bad argument. It is also the most reflective visible and IR gas, clouds reflect so much light coming in from the sun that their winter net watts per square meter forcing is near zero, and in the summer, water vapor is a climate cooling factor.
5
@JFB Weather (short-term) is not climate (long-term)....
2
JFB is correct that water vapor is the most ABUNDANT infrared absorbing gas in the atmosphere. All climate, weather, and spectroscopy experts know this. Even the so-called expert Al Gore knows this.
Clouds are more than just water vapor. Water vapor does not have a cooling effect in the summer, condensation of water vapor , aka rain, does. Most of the infrared radiation comes from earth so clouds help trap it. I am not sure where you got your information from but it is wrong as presented in your comment.
Whilst not my first choice or even a fair choice might help with your confusion:
http://gsp.humboldt.edu/OLM/Courses/GSP_216_Online/lesson2-1/atmosphere.html
Dr. William Reusch has open source spectroscopy textbooks available if you care to learn science facts.
1
If no one skis, injuries will go way down. Now if we get rid of football, brain injury stats will improve.
4
Look at the bumper to bumper traffic on Colorado I 70 leading to the state's ski areas. The industry is fundamentally a carbon intensive sport regardless of how they run their operations. And how about the private jets flying into Aspen? We could make a big dent in carbon emissions by shutting the industry down. Nothing has been done to provide alternatives to cars on I 70.
221
@tom street-Wouldn't it be great if the skiing industries and billionaires got together and funded a monorail up these canyons? This and a shuttle system would help ski resorts retain what makes them special. People could pay for their day trips or stay-overs along with their monorail ticket. Relaxed low-impact travel would do a lot to improve the experience and lessen the harm on the environment.
18
@Ann are monorails only for moneyed skiers? No way would they use them if the common herd has access.
Monorails would be useful schlepping the help up to the resorts, but moneyed CEO is never going to willing sit with the mundane.
4
@tom street
People don’t live in the mountains, you have to travel to get there. Same thing with a Caribbean island. The market dictates how much that cost, and here, market forces give a fair representation of the cost of participation.
Since I live on Long Island NY, I have to shlep all the way to the airport to get on my Gulfstream Five to do a little skiing in Aspen. It’s daunting, I know, but worth it.
Skiing down the hill, the only thing I’m burning is calories. Yes, we all have to get there, but that could be the grocery store, or visiting Grandma.
The solution is trains everywhere, covered in solar panels.
We will get there eventually.
3
In a Ted Talk a passionate16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg walked out of school at the beginning of the year and organized a strike to raise awareness of global warming. Apparently, many other young people in Europe are protesting in an effort to highlight their frustration that the world governments are doing too little to protect their future. Thunberg believes climate change should be on the front page of our papers every day. I think, rightly so, many young people are as scared of what climate change will do as they are frustrated. The varied, often not too organized reaction of the ski industry to the effects of climate change on their business reminds me of farmers who often cannot speak as one strong, powerful voice on issues (like tariffs) affecting them. Thunberg is convinced we have all the facts about the changing climate we need. And she believes we have many solutions – if only we would get really, really serious about the health of our planet, our environment, ourselves.
74
@Rev Wayne
Ms Thunberg needs to stop focusing on governments and start working with individuals. Climate is a local/regional issue, not global. Nothing will get done and people will feel paralyzed if we keep it at such a large scale. She also needs to put emphasis on population growth and resource consumption reduction.
Scientists from the University of York, in Canada along with the residents of Sudbury, ONT were able to take steps in reducing the effects of climate change by cleaning up the toxic waste, restoring historical land cover and land use, increased porosity of the land , and retrofitting buildings to use less energy. Michigan has recovered much of its forested land by huge reduction in population. Plains areas are seeing improvements by historic prairie restoration.
The true solution is right in front of our faces. We choose to be paralyzed with atmos-fear or worse, do nothing.
10
@skramsv
Can we say it is both? I cannot control how my electricity is controlled; governments can set energy policies like the Scandinavians have - wind, solar, biomass burning, hydroelectric - but they also have enormous reserves of gas and oil (Norway in particular) - but the Norwegians have spent literally billions for preservation in tropical regions. I doubt that Exxon or Total has done the same thing. France is still into the spend, spend and destroy the environment mode, and Italy is entering a recession that keeps them preoccupied. The wars in the Near East are highly polluting and so are the desalination plants in Saudi Arabia. African governments are beyond the pale in terms of lack of preservation of the continent's environment - and deserts have eaten most of the continent compared to only 50 years ago (hence major emigration). These are just a few examples of the impact of governmental policies on environmental degradation. Governments need to get on-board; not just local communities.
12
@Rev Wayne I have so much respect for Greta Thunberg and her peers who are out on the streets calling for Climate Justice and Climate Action.
To quote Greta Thunberg "We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis."
The times are a changing. And it's not the wealthy or comfortable who are leading that change.
5
Do the Koch brothers and their fellow billionaires controlling the fossil fuel industry, and the political fortunes of these Republican politicians, ski? It is no accident that Representatives McCarthy, Rogers, and Cheney are in leadership positions of that craven party, totally beholden to the millionaire/billionaire class. Always, follow the $$$.
19
> people who love the sport aren’t doing enough to stop climate change.
I'm sure the author takes public transit to the slopes.
But what is the carbon footprint of the average ski trip?
32
Looking back in 10 years people are going to laugh between their tears that anyone wrote an article about saving skiing in the context of climate change.
I mean, I get it: this is just using skiing as a vehicle to get to the crux, but come on, we are headed towards global calamity and picking up speed.
And finally, rich people all know this, they just also know it's too late to do anything about any of it. They just have the luxury of living it up as the ship sinks. In terms of skiing, specifically, it's not like rich people really care about actual skiing all that much. They just want to be where other rich people are and pose/preen.
76
@Matthew
Correct and nasty on the slopes, when they do venture out in their Arc’teryx and Spider costumes, they are. As a kid in the late sixties when skiing was not as class divided, I remember great conversations in lift lines and on the chairs. No longer. A few years ago in Taos I was in the singles line skiing up to join a 3some on the 5 chair main lift. A woman in that group turned back to me and said, “ You need to stay back because we have something we need to talk about”. I wouldn’t expect any of these people to have any sensitivity towards much of anything (let alone the climate) except themselves.
3
Too late? If everybody was as pessimistic as you are, we would be as doomed as you say. There's no point in saying it's too late to do anything, as you're only encouraging the people who would rather do nothing in the first place. If you care about the planet, I suggest that you either change your attitude, or see yourself out of the climate conversation.
3
Look. According to published figures an average cabinet member in President Trump’s first cabinet had a net worth of $451 billion. At that level of wealth they and their decedents for the next century or more will be able to enjoy skiing simply by moving to higher elevations and to more polar areas. In fact the net worth of this group and similar people will likely increase greatly over time through their investments in coal and other profit making, climate changing, non-renewable energy sources.
For the rest of us, people like me need to worry about their distant decedents being able to simply survive long term climate change by being able to move to habitable areas, areas that will be becoming rarer and more and more critical as >7 billion people fight one another for simple survival.
One hears a lot of nonsense these days about trivial matters being existential crises. Skiing? Get real.
15
@DKI It's impossible for one's decedents to have survived climate change or anything else.
1
@DK. It may seem trivial to you, but skiing is the passion of my underfunded middle-class life. Between the pincers of runaway warming and the shrinking of mid-latitude, breathable-elevation skiing, on the one hand, and the runaway cost of high-quality access (Vail is not alone with its $200/day lift tickets) on the other, there is a certain sad resignation that my septuagenarian body just can't enjoy what I took for granted for decades.
But, boy, some of the memories. And I would hesitate to dismiss as trivial such a canary in the coal mine as the demise of winter as we knew it.
2
Reminds me of Holiday Inn - if we all sing "White Christmas" the snow will come.
Serious question - if 10 years ago, we had taken all the drastic measures to eliminate fossil fuels that you all say are necessary - how many more people would have died from this week's cold wave and would you tell their relatives that those deaths were justified?
3
@Ambrose Rivers: Weather and climate are two different things; this is critical to understanding what climate change means, and it will help you understand why your question may not make sense to some people.
Secondly, extreme weather events (even cold events) may also be linked to climate change. I know the term "global warming" confuses many self-declared geniuses, like our President....but the fact that a Polar Vortex occurred is actually not a good reason to continue to destroy the planet.
14
@Ambrose Rivers
A major way to eliminate fossil fuels by reducing their use is to insulate better. Better insulated buildings would save lives. Lives would also be saved because fires, floods, mudslides, and heat waves would be less severe and frequent.
At some point, you may have to explain to younger relatives why you did not take climate change seriously. Since they must live with the worsening effects of climate change, they may be outraged by your explanations.
10
@Ambrose Rivers Serious question - why would more people have died? Are you saying that there would be no heating because renewable energy sources would not have been installed?
12
Thank you for writing about something I have thought about for 50 years since I began to ski on binderless wood slats around age 10. The first step is education, spread the word, the snow-water-ice fields are vanishing, the consequences are severe, and we must act. It's going to take years and lots of work. Maybe the degradation can be slowed if all outdoor enthusiasts join the campaign, financially, politically, and participate. I, too, have been "around" and seen change. From St. Moritz, Chamonix, Flims ( Swiss), Alta, Snowbird, Whistler, A-Basin, Mohawk (CT) Poweder Ridge (CT-closed) Mt. TOm (MA closed) moving up thru VT to Jay Peak where temps have moderated, but it's raining there Monday. So I will do what I can, and help, for my kids and there kids. Keep writing and talkg about this.
22
"Multiple forms of denial" in the ski industry? I think the ski industry has accepted the obvious. Despite its political efforts, climate change is inevitable, and adapting to climate change is the only rational plan of action. Relative to other industries (energy, for ex.), the ski industry is tiny and modestly capitalized, so they are in little position to focus their dollars on stopping climate change. For these enterprises, it's economically better to adapt and spend their funds on practical alternatives like ensuring water rights and permitting multi season activities. Personally, I'll contribute my own funds to stopping climate change, but corporations tend to have a more near-term, and economically motivated focus, so there's no surprise that their efforts are focused more on adapting than preventing.
7
If most owners and supporters of ski resorts, and presumably their local communities, support legislators and policy makers who are climate change deniers, then why on earth should the rest of us care if their stance is not only self-defeating but also puts all the rest of us at risk.
If they lose out in the end because of melting glaciers and ever-decreasing snow packs, they
have only themselves to blame.
12
@Kathy - You bet, Kathy. Let's all just wait for somebody else to go first, because (crossed fingers, hopes and prayers, etc.) it might not affect Me. /s
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@Kathy - I live near Lake Tahoe and many ski resorts. Our community voted over 70% for the non-climate-change-denier Democratic candidate for the 4th District of California. Unfortunately, "flatlanders" also live in our District, and our candidate lost. We are no more to blame for the result of that election than the majority of Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton and got Trump.
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I think the more apt question is why aren't rich people leading the efforts to reduce climate change. There are plenty of possible answers and one probably isn't enough to cover all the wealthy. They may be realistic and calculate there is so little chance of success that it would be wasteful to devote their resources to that attempt. They may be realistic and conclude that being wealthy is the single best way for them to escape/mitigate the effects of climate change and so they should focus on being even wealthier. They may be oblivious. They may be captured by fantasy beliefs denying science. They may have an extremely short time horizon and only need to get through the next decade or two. They may not have much care for the welfare of others and wish to widen the gap in the quality of life between themselves and all others. They may actually be doing quite a bit but hiding their tracks such as by using their wealth in untraceable support for selected political candidates (that way they won't be ostracized from their clubs). Who knows? But the point is that we collectively are continuing to conduct an experiment to determine what happens when climate changes rapidly and our children will know some of the immediate results.
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The Republican and Democratic parties both supported environmental progress in the 1960s and '70s. The EPA was established under Nixon. An enormous amount of money has been spent by the fossil fuel interests to turn the Republicans and rural Democrats against environmental and climate change legislation. Short-term benefits such as tax cuts for corporations and the extremely wealthy have also been effective at convincing wealthy people to put aside concerns about climate change.
Water shortages and fires will eventually convince wealthy people to do something but much damage will have been done. The rich will fly further north to ski.
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@FishOutofWater Great point about Nixon, who, though regarded by history as such a sceeve was a joy compared to what we have now when it came to recognizing wildlife and the environment. His Congress implemented the Endangered Species Act and the EPA! Our society has been reduced to such partisan politics it is shameful, and the primary force behind it is, of course, money and power. The trade off for our technological advancements is that they have enabled us to ruin ourselves.
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I hate to be the cynic, but I’m at Steamboat right now. The people that build these mountain mansions aren’t skiers. They’re money-‘makers’.
You’re asking the moneyed to support something that costs them.
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Maybe the ski industry can get behind the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act,HR 763, a bipartisan bill before the House that can cut our CO2 emissions by 40% in 12 years without regulation, just free enterprise. It creates a steadily-rising fee on CO2 sources, which economists favor. These funds are then split among all Americans to spend as they wish. This gives poor people enough money to deal with higher prices (typically 10 cents per gallon). Energyinnovationact.org.
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@Henry SLack This is happening--a number of resorts have already endorsed, including Aspen/Snowmass. But for real progress to happen, we need to do more than support sure to fail legislation. Also, and this may be the change we see happening, the trade groups need to act unilaterally (Ie, we as a trade group support this bill) vs. providing the option for resorts to support. I believe this is starting to happen.
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@Auden Schendler
The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act will succeed if we all support it. It is a bipartisan bill that will work to reduce carbon use, put money back directly into individuals pockets, and incentivize investment in climate friendly energy sources. Call your legislators today and ask them to support the bill! (Currently in US House of Representatives)
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@Henry SLack
Just go look at the chart of global CO2. It's too late. And US is only 15% of global CO2 emissions in any case. So 40% of 15% in 12 years from now....nope... waaaaay too little waaaaaaay too late.
Globally we continue to blow through worst-case projections. The imperative of economic security is still 100% diametrically opposed to curbing emissions (as well as all manner of environmental degradation). Global population is still growing at about 80,000,000 per year. All trends lines are really, really, really bad.
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