Protect Our Winters Hat Protect Our Winters Make America Deep Again

MAKE AMERICA DEEP Once more

On April 29, our partners at Protect Our Winters (POW) are marching to Brand America Deep Again.

Lynsey Dyer | Jackson Hole, WY Photograph WADE MCKOY

Protect Our Winters and Relieve the World

by Eric Hansen

Jeremy Jones is not an obvious pick for a leader in the fight against global warming. A National Geographic Charlatan of the Year, an O'Neill-sponsored big mount snowboarder, and the owner of his own company, Jones Snowboards, the 39-yr-old is plenty busy.

He'southward also no organisation man . By his own account, he barely graduated high school. And before starting the Protect Our Winters nonprofit in 2007, beyond tracking the side by side low-pressure system, he didn't think too deeply near the time to come of snowfall. "I definitely wasn't some enviro driving a veggie-oil machine," he says.

But while traveling the globe for film shoots and ripping his local mountain, California's Squaw Valley, he started to wonder if it was just him, or if indeed winters were growing more unpredictable. One winter Alaska was getting hammered; the next, information technology was almost dry out. A trivial scrap of research suggested there was a genuine problem—ski seasons were getting shorter and more erratic. And so Jones did what many practise when faced with a problem of grave severity. He pulled out his checkbook. He set aside proceeds from his signature boards, enlisted the help of an environmentalist friend, and looked for a suitable nonprofit to back up. Trouble was, they couldn't notice a unmarried advancement group representing America'due south 20 million snow sports enthusiasts. "My friend said, 'Yous need to starting time your own matter!'" says Jones. Two years later, that'due south exactly what Jones, reluctantly, did. And Protect Our Winters was built-in.

Jeremy Jones and Ryland Bong | Mount Timlin, AK
PHOTOGRAPH JEFF CURLEY

POW, every bit information technology's called, is at present simply crawly. Based in Pacific Palisades, California, the nonprofit advocacy organization touts thirty,000 members and dozens of corporate sponsors, including big names and big money like The North Confront, Clif Bar, Patagonia, Vans, and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. The grouping lobbies elected officials, speaks at dozens of schools, and commissions studies on how global warming affects the $61 billion American snow sports manufacture. (Hint: not positively.) The goal is to unite skiers and snowboarders and everyone involved in winter sports against policies and practices that increment greenhouse gas emissions. More than that though, Pw works to change the tone of climate alter discussions from doom and gloom to hope and action.

Function of their success is probable due to the fact that Jones is such a reluctant savior. He has insisted from the commencement that POW shouldn't be flamboyant, but efficient. "From the beginning, I idea, in order for this to work, it can't be a Jeremy Jones foundation," he says. "Nosotros need people to rally around information technology and we demand to put a microscope on the piece of work." Early on, Jones convinced lawyers, website designers, public relations firms, and marketing man Chris Steinkamp, currently POW'southward executive director, to volunteer their services. He made sure that at least 85 cents of every dollar went to programs, not paychecks or slush funds. So Pow did something truly hard: The group made joining the fight confronting climate change absurd.

It's a vital signal given how dry out the science has been in the past. It helps that climate change is no longer a debatable concept. In August, the United Nations warned that humans are "extremely likely" to have been the "dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century," and warned of "abrupt and irreversible" changes to our planet if carbon dioxide connected to be emitted at present rates.

Nonetheless, fighting climate change is not sexy, fifty-fifty past the relatively depression standards of environmental groups. There is no global warming backhoe to chain oneself to or global warming owl to rally around. The fight is then big that information technology tin can announced to exist on an altogether inhuman scale. We are, afterwards all, talking almost the entire world. So Jones put a face on the fight. He volunteered his hale mug, not unlike Bono did for African debt relief in the 1990s, and quickly attracted many more than pro athlete ambassadors to the crusade.

Pw has since signed up some sixty winter sports athletes, from China to Michigan, from Olympic medalists to Ten Games champs, from other big mount snowboarders to cross-land skiers. The POW Riders Brotherhood lends its vocalism to environmental films like last bound's Momenta, pens op-eds and talks warming on-camera, and creates large-scale artwork. At this year'south Higher movie premiere (the third installment of Jones's well received man-powered snowboarding serial) Riders Alliance athletes asked the audience to sign a huge banner and write why they desire a cooler planet. The overarching goal of the Riders Alliance is to bring notwithstanding more people into the fold, and to encourage other skiers and boarders to adopt The POW 7, which is an outline of the easy means that we can all advocate for colder, longer winters. Number one on the list is "Get political." Number iii is "Detect Your Biggest Lever." Not flamboyant—efficient. Sarah Laskow, writing in environmental mag Grist, called The POW Vii "the best green action program nosotros've ever seen."

The POW Seven fits in POW's vision of creating smart programs—every bit opposed to haranguing people into recycling. "Nosotros're a fiddling too far down the timeline for that," says Porter Flim-flam, writer of DEEP: The Story of Skiing and The Future of Snow. Instead, Pow is focused squarely on maximizing their impact—finding that big lever. In this case that means using the Riders Alliance to help recruit an army of young soldiers to the fight against climate change—and through them, urge politicians to exercise the right things. At present.

Since launching in 2011, POW athletes have visited more than than 50 schools in a programme cosponsored by The Due north Face up called "Hot Planet/Cool Athletes." At the schools they lead assemblies, play some gnarly clips, so get into an engaging talk about how the 1.4-degree increase in temperature since 1800 is, well, melting snowfall. "That generation is so much more up to the challenge than infant boomers," Jones says. "They're like, 'We want the same world you grew upward in. Why is this fifty-fifty up for discussion?'"

Things in Washington, D.C. are a bit trickier. Each year, a dozen athletes from the Riders Alliance and a half dozen representatives from the likes of Burton, Patagonia, and Aspen Skiing Company spend a whirlwind day on the hill lobbying senators, congressmen, and members of the EPA. On a recent trip, Jones ended up in hiking boots, having forgotten his clothes shoes. And he still needs help tying his tie. Merely thankfully, Pow's fish-out-of-water status within the Beltway also plays to their reward.

"What almost all the senators and congressmen said to usa is, 'You know what, I agree with what yous're doing. Brand me do information technology, force me, on a local level, to vote your manner.' In other words, if we can build a groundswell around these problems, then they have to act on information technology. Which is just what Pw is doing, what it'southward great at doing. We can motion the needle." —Chris Davenport

"In Washington, a lot of the senators and people hear the same thing over and over from lobbyists," says executive director Steinkamp. "But when athletes bear witness up, it's dissimilar." He recalls a Prisoner of war visit to Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska who has been a notorious climate change flip flopper. The Pw folks expected the coming together to last 10 minutes. Instead, it lasted an hour. No coal-fired power plants were mothballed, but a surprising alliance was formed. Murkowski, it turned out, is a skier, and her nephew is a founder of ski moving-picture show visitor Sweetgrass Productions.

One of Prisoner of war's biggest successes so far was on June 2 of this twelvemonth. Knowing the EPA was likely to announce stricter carbon emissions standards for power plants, POW turned its members and fans into Tweeting, Instagraming, Facebooking cheerleaders. "We reached out to everyone and said, 'Here are sample Tweets, here are some skilful facts, here are other things you can do.' And and then we just lit the place up," says Jones. Net slacktivism information technology was non. At the terminate of the business concern day, a staffer at the White House called Prisoner of war to personally give thanks them for the support.

"I've lived here for 12 years and the snow just isn't as consistent. At least Mammoth is high plenty that the freezing level is pretty consistent, but nosotros're still seeing drastic swings. Four years agone, we had our accented best flavor on record, followed by our accented worst." —Kimmy Fasani

Photo Erin Hogue

To say that POW faces a host of formidable foes is an understatement. The oil manufacture, for example, has reserves of crude and other fossil fuel discoveries that it is not keen to abandon, or have regulated. So while Pow fries away, the big 5 oil companies lobby Congress to maintain the condition quo—spending an average of $445,000 on Capitol Hill each day, according to Play a joke on.

Even more daunting, recent studies show that somehow, despite the wealth of scientific discipline, half of Americans still doubtfulness that human-caused global warming exists, non to mention could cause "abrupt and irreversible" changes.

Jones and POW respond with firsthand stories, or when necessary, they unleash the wonky facts. In May, the White House released the third National Climate Assessment. The president's scientific discipline advisor summarized the scientific consensus on global warming. "On the whole," he said, "summers are longer and hotter, with longer periods of extended heat. Wildfires start before in the jump and continue later into the autumn. Rain comes downwards in heavier downpours. People are experiencing changes in the length and severity of seasonal allergies. And climate disruptions to h2o resources and agriculture have been increasing."

Photo Lee Cohen

With its clear focus on winter, POW is able to excerpt the essential information of concern to its winter-minded members and followers—many of which are included in the widely publicized study they and the Natural Resources Defence Council deputed,Climate Impacts on the Winter Tourism Economic system in the United states of america. Overall, at that place will be more pelting in coming decades, thanks to rising temperatures, and ski seasons will become shorter, thanks to longer, warmer shoulder seasons. Tahoe, California, already sees bound two weeks earlier than in 1961. By 2050, one-half of the ski areas in the Northeast, some 50 resorts, could close, more often than not because they won't accept plenty snow to open for the lucrative Christmas vacation. And resorts in the West could lose a quarter to all of their midwinter snowpack by 2100.

To this depressing news, Jones replies, "Dude, join Prisoner of war."

More important than securing another $twenty membership fee is simply increasing membership, increasing the size of the tribe. The more people Prisoner of war represents in D.C., the more disarming it is with political wafflers. And the sooner Jones, and all of us, can become dorsum to doing what we really want to do: riding deep snow.

On April 29, our partners at Protect Our Winters (Pow) are marching to Make America Deep Over again. Nosotros're with them. To assistance get you on lath, we're dedicating the prime number real estate on our site to a smattering of the POW content that Mountain Media has produced over the years. Check it out, become inspired, and so follow this link http://protectourwinters.org/bring together-a-march/ to find a mountain town march near you. #March4POW

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Source: http://www.mountainonline.com/make-america-deep/

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