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The economic effects are staggering. 2018 report by researchers at the University of New Hampshire and Colorado State University for the advocacy group Protect Our Winters It shows that the five least profitable winters between 2001 and 2016 cost the industry an estimated $1 billion and more than 17,000 jobs per season. Climate professor Mr. Scott adds that vacation property values could drop and ski areas that don’t make enough snow could close. In Colorado, workers have extended snowmaking to the summit of 11,212-foot-high Aspen Mountain so that managers can independently operate the upper half of this facility in anticipation of losing lower altitude runs. Surviving ski areas may even become more populated as the overall skier population declines.
“Assuming demand is close to current levels, which is as the analogues of these recent record-breaking warm winters show, resorts will have to accommodate more skiers with fewer ski days, fewer terrains open,” Mr.
A two-pronged approach
To combat this, ski areas are taking a two-pronged approach in Washington DC and at home. The political fight to tackle climate change is progressing slowly, but National Ski Areas Association, Outdoor Industry Association and Snow Sports Industries America Work with lawmakers like Representative Ann McLane from New Hampshire Congress Ski and Snowboard Group Meeting — enabling them to enact meaningful climate policies. Protect Our Winters, a consortium of athletes, scientists, ski area managers and outdoor business leaders, is asking a price for carbon, more renewable energy and cleaner transportation systems. Mr Schendler, of Aspen, who is also the group’s chairman, said the organization is trying to mobilize “outdoor weather” to “create a giant, powerful climate movement” to do so.
“The outdoor industry is bigger, richer, crazier and more influential than the NRA,” he said. “We need CEOs, trade groups, and leadership to wield this power ruthlessly. Pretend you’re the NRA and the climate has gun rights. What would you do?”
Much of what has been done in the past two decades as ski resorts seek to green their activities has taken place at the local level – a strategy that Mr. Schendler has called “basically a public relations movement”.
But since 2000, the National Ski Areas Association has created guidance and initiatives to help ski areas become more sustainable and more advocacy work. Working with the NSAA, American ski regions have reduced their emissions by more than 110,000 metric tons over the past decade, with twice that amount purchasing renewable energy credits, said Adrienne Saia Isaac, the organization’s director of marketing and communications. Together, this is roughly equivalent to not burning 352 million pounds of coal.
It’s also very little compared to the 400 to 1,600 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases. Oxford Net ZeroA research group at the University of Oxford in England says we need to move away from the atmosphere to avoid the worst of climate change, but it helps. Running a resort almost entirely on solar power, as Park City and Deer Valley do; finding ways to build more environmentally friendly housing, as a partnership between Utah’s Powder Mountain and Weber State University; or composting leftover food More efficient like in New Mexico Taos Ski Valley doing – these moves may not move the needle much, but they still have value.
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