I Am Pro Snow.

I just got home from a great weekend working/skiing at Moonlight Basin Resort in Big Sky, MT.  I was working with the USGBC Montana Chapter (I’m on the board) for our first (hopefully annual) Keep It Deep event on climate change awareness and advocacy.  We partnered with the Climate Reality Project (yes, that Climate Reality Project, the one Al Gore started) and POW (Protect Our Winters) to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on winter recreation in the Northern Rockies.  Kevin Germaine, General Manager at Moonlight Basin, outlined some of the steps the resort is taking to implement sustainable practices, and emphasized just how much more they have to do to adapt in the face of the changing climate.  Jordy Hendrikx, the Director of the Snow & Avalanche Laboratory at Montana State University shared his experience as a Snow and Ice Scientist living in Christchurch, New Zealand and how he has seen climate change impact the winter landscape.

We kicked off the day skiing.  It was beautiful, unseasonably so.  It was about 36 degrees, bluebird skies and .  The NRDC Report I referenced last fall reported the strongest winter warming trends to be in the northern US, where snowpack is a critical component of winter economies.  Last year, Moonlight Basin recorded its lowest snowfall on record for the month of January, at just 34 inches.  How does 2013 compare, you might ask?  Frighteningly.  To date, Moonlight has received just 17 inches, half of its worst year ever.  We’re all holding our breath for more snowfall over the next few months; the better the snowpack, the lower the wildfire danger. 

At the event, we encouraged people to take the climate pledge, record a message to send to our legislators on why climate change is an important issue, and helped to promote the Climate Reality Project’s new campaign, I Am Pro Snow, a partnership with Warren Miller Entertainment.  We shared a clip of their new film, Flow State, which documents the travels of premier skiers to areas impacted by climate change.  Their message:

I Am Pro Snow.

I will ski anything.

I will ride anywhere.

I will take on anything.

The steep.  The deep.

The long, cold hikes that give me

A view that makes God envious.

But, fellow Powder Hounds, the Big Melt is on.

Mother Nature has a fever. 

And Old Man Winter is sporting a tan.

Our season is getting shorter and shorter.

Our earth is getting warmer and warmer.

Climate change is real.  It’s here.

And it’s just met its match in boots.

I stand for snow.  I need snow.

But, right now, snow needs me. 

I am pro snow.

We handed out “I Am Pro Snow” hats and stickers, we struck up conversations with strangers about why they loved to ski or snowboard.  We even had a woman theatrically stomp off, furious and offended that this event had anything to do with Al Gore. 

All in all, it was a successful first go-round.  We hope to take this to more ski areas across the region, and continue to work with the individuals and organizations that are creating the structure for positive action to address climate change. 

Please, whether you love or hate Al Gore, please take the pledge:

“I pledge my name in support of a better tomorrow, one powered by clean energy. I demand action from our leaders to work on solutions to the climate crisis. I pledge to get involved. And I pledge to share this global promise. By uniting my voice with a million others, we have the power to change the world.“

2013: The Year of…Déjà vu?

"You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself."  ~Nelson Mandela

2013, the New Year.  What a great time for our society to be motivated, to “change ourselves for the better” and lose weight, exercise more, eat better, quit coffee, and…and…and…

The first weeks of 2013 have been filled with articles about looking back and looking forward in business, the most read stories of 2012 (“iPhone 5 Less Toxic than Samsung Galaxy!”  or Historic drought and Hurricane Sandy sweep away (some) climate denial! or WalMart Accused of Greenwashing!) and ahem…predictions for the upcoming year (Obama develops national climate change strategy! or Global Sale of Sustainable Goods and Services Reaches $2Trillion!).  You can even “Relive the year on Twitter”.  This is a miniscule sampling of the significant and not-so-significant events of the year, and I realize I’m leaving out a lot of important things such as the Occupy movement, same-sex marriage, health care, Keystone XL…I could go on and on but this is a blog not a novel. 

Obviously the news stories I’ve been reading are all centered on environmental issues and not whether Snooki got Botox (Really?  That’s what our society cares about?!).  So I wonder, what will 2013 bring us?  Will this be the year of positive traction for extending our time as a species on this great planet?  Or will it be the year of Déjà vu?

I wait anxiously for a sign, an indication we are moving in the right direction, from the front lines of government.  One headline caught my attention, the “Green Deal” from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, a national program for energy efficiency improvements (wait, AND climate change?  Oh, that’s the UK DoE, not US.  Darn.) How cool would that be if the U.S. offered such a program? The Green Deal sounds similar to PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing, which provides local government financing for energy-efficiency improvements or renewable energy systems and is tied to the property not the borrower (read: builders don’t have to recoup the cost of the system because the buyer pays for it over the life of the loan).  PACE has had its ups and downs, but today is available in 28 states plus Washington D.C.  It seems like a straightforward and cost-effective way to encourage improved energy efficiency and investments in small-scale generation systems. 

There are some other faint glimmers of hope.  President Obama named climate change as one of the top 3 priorities for his second term; groups like Climate Summit 2013 and the Climate Reality Project are working hard to hold the administration to put their money where their mouths are.  Last summer, Annie Leonard and the crew at The Story of Stuff Project released a new video, The Story of Change, encouraging citizens to work together and take action to redefine the system.  I’m thrilled to get to meet and work with her personally in April, when she will join us for the UnCommon Sense workshop and graduation as our commencement speaker. 

My hope for the coming year is that we as individuals will stand up together as the 74% of Americans who support tougher laws on toxic chemicals, the 83% of Americans who want clean energy laws, the 85% of Americans who want to get corporations out of government, and make change happen.  I hope we will use quality of life and gross national happiness as measures of success rather than corporate profit; that we will demand human rights and economic equality, and create an economy based on the needs of needs of people and the planet, and our survival as a species.

Will my overqualified and underemployed/unemployed friends and colleagues find work?  Will my non-profit, doing good work for the businesses in the region and the health of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, yet struggling to stay afloat, be able to sustain our own survival?  I hope so. 

Here’s to the New Year, one that I hope will be filled with courage, inspiration, unhindered boldness and radical progress.  Prost.