More evidence of global warming? Maybe, maybe not. But doubts among scientists about global warming have receded in the last several years. Most scientists now agree that a significant portion of rising global temperatures can be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels.
Less clear is how this changing climate will affect ski areas. Susan Joy Hassol, a science writer whose specialty is global climate, says that global climate models, while reliable at continental scales, cannot be taken literally for smaller regions, such as Colorado’s I-70 corridor or even for New England ski areas. But no precise modeling is needed to understand the big picture, she says. Models clearly point toward less snow generally, and even where there is more snow, it won’t last as long—winters will be shorter and warmer. And the news gets worse: Winter temperatures will rise more than summer temperatures, and at night more than during the day—threatening snowmaking operations. The snow line will move higher, threatening first those ski areas at marginal elevations or latitudes.
Will there still be cold and unusually snowy winters? Yes, she says, as New England ski areas can testify this past winter. But that’s the short-term variability. The long-term outlook for climate is warmer. An industry already dependent upon weather is now facing a climate that is shifting in the wrong direction, at least for conventional skiing operations.
In the past few years ski area operators have begun to acknowledge their vulnerability and the need to confront global warming. The National Ski Areas Association’s (NSAA) “Keep Winter Cool” program coalesced several dozen ski areas this past February 22 into explaining their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases as well as other environmental accomplishments.
By almost any measure, the program was a success, getting ink by the gallon in ski-town newspapers, which are often skeptical of resort actions on the environment. Even better, at least in terms of sheer volume, were two lengthy segments on CNN’s Headline News. In one segment, Dennis Kelly, vice chairman of Green Mountain Energy, a provider of wind-generated power, was an articulate cheerleader for the ski industry. He described the environmental initiatives of ski resorts and also explained what people can do, particularly by creating demand for renewable energy. This is a remarkable turnaround for an industry that just five or six years ago had largely shrugged off global warming.
That lack of interest among ski area operators turned to concern as formerly skeptical scientists began closing ranks. A University of California-Santa Cruz report predicting warming-induced climate changes for the Sierra Nevada triggered a new activism in the California Ski Industry Association (CSIA). In January 2002, CSIA announced support of a proposal to mandate tightened mileage and emission standards for cars sold in California. Now a law, it requires changes beginning in 2007.
“We take it (global warming) as a very serious concern,” says Bob Roberts, the association’s executive director. Just as miners took caged canaries into the mines to warn them of deadly gases, he says, ski areas today are the canaries of global warming—they are likely to be one of the first industries to feel the impact of climatic shifts.
The Big Picture
The earth’s atmosphere has been warming since about 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. That roughly coincides with the start of the Industrial Age and stepped-up use of fossil fuels. It wasn’t long before scientists began to suspect a connection between the two.
Climates fluctuate naturally, of course, and scientists disagreed whether natural fluctuation, greenhouse gases, or some combination of the two had caused the decade of the 1990s to be the hottest the planet endured in the last 150 years. But a report released by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change in 2000 helped resolve the debate. The panel of hundreds of scientists concluded that greenhouse gases produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels are altering the atmosphere in ways that affect the earth’s climate. Further, they said, the greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels “contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years.”
A 2001 report prepared by 11 leading atmospheric scientists in the United States, including previous skeptics about global warming, reaffirmed the view that human activity has been largely responsible for our recent warmed atmosphere. A report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year echoed this new consensus, as did a report from the National Academy of Sciences. Nearly all former dissenters with substantial credentials now concede a link between climate change and man-induced greenhouse gases.
However, scientists agree that large uncertainties continue to limit predictions of the extent and consequences of future warming, both good and bad. Scientists now predict temperatures will rise 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit during the next century, compared to the 5- to 9-degree rise since the last ice age ended 18,000 years ago.
The Mountain View
The ski industry’s response has generally mirrored that of the U.S. as a whole. Geraldine Link, director of public policy for NSAA, traces the first discussions about global warming to 1997. [Ed Note: Actually, a major feature in September 1986 *SAM* entitled “Global Warming and Ski Resorts” initiated the debate some 11 years earlier.] The NSAA environmental charter, adopted in 2000, devotes a section to global warming. “It was acknowledged in 2000 as something that we can step up and do something about,” she says.
NSAA’s campaign seeks to strike a balance between raising awareness of global warming and raising alarms about the possibly detrimental effects on snow conditions. “For us, climate change is a long-term issue, but if there is something we can do in the short term, then we want to do our part,” says Link. “I think resorts can be proactive on this issue without giving their marketing departments heartburn.”
The Sustainable Slopes Summit, she says, provided a crucial framework for that public campaign. The event also indirectly resulted in a new partnership with a mainline environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council. That group contacted Link about collaborative efforts after the ski industry’s new attention to global warming was reported by *Newsweek* magazine in December. Websites for the two organizations are now linked on the issue of global warming. As Link sees it, there’s no downside to the ski industry in addressing global warming.
This new partnership may result in a common voice, at least in some limited areas, when Washington considers responses to global warming. One current discussion in the capital centers on tightened mileage and emission standards for vehicles. Another debate concerns a requirement for energy utilities to include a certain portion of renewable sources in their portfolios. The ski industry’s stance on these and other issues will be on the agenda at the NSAA conference in San Diego in May.
Ski Industry Two-Step
Jackson Hole’s Jerry Blann, who has chaired NSAA’s environmental committee, foresees a two-pronged role for the industry: reducing demand for energy from fossil fuels and education. On the former, ski areas can take small steps in ways that add up, he says. Jackson Hole, for example, is encouraging use of mass transit by including bus fares into the price of season passes. It is also attempting to reduce power needs by retrofitting lighting fixtures to compact fluorescent bulbs. Several major resorts are investing in biodiesel, which produces less of the harmful greenhouse gases.
Some argue for a more direct response to global warming. Chris Lane, the former environmental coordinator at Aspen, now has a comparable position with Zanterra, a concessionaire at national parks. Despite the advances of recent years, he sees ski areas lagging behind the actions being taken in the national parks. Zanterra operates 52 hybrid vehicles in its fleet of several hundred, and last year it retrofitted 24,000 lighting fixtures. Several years ago, Zanterra switched to four-stroke technology for snowmobiles, boats, and other vehicles.
Resorts are also investing in wind power. Jackson Hole powers two lifts with wind-generated electricity, a symbolic natural in often-windy Wyoming. Aspen may well have the greatest percentage of its operations powered by wind-generated electricity, though Vail, where one percent of operations are electrified by wind power, is the largest buyer.
The ski industry’s second major role is to facilitate education about global warming. Blann says that “even when we are a small part of the problem, we can have a larger-than-life impact on decisions people make, not only at our resorts, but when they go home.”
Also, acting to reduce global warming can lead to public relations bonuses, as accrued to California ski area operators. When his organization supported stiffer mileage requirements for cars, says Roberts, environmental groups seemed to reappraise ski areas. “I don’t hear us being accused of industrial grade recreation any more,” he says.
And make it easy to understand your efforts. In a press release announcing a lighting retrofit, for example, the Aspen Skiing Co. explains that the change eliminates X pounds of pollutants being put into the atmosphere, instead of saying X pounds of carbon dioxide.
What Next?
Despite these advances, the ski industry can do still more about global warming. Although not a smokestack industry, it depends upon smokestacks and tailpipes at every turn—smokestacks for its voracious appetite for the electric energy that runs lifts and snowmaking; tailpipes for the cars, buses and planes that bring customers to the mountains. Auto emissions, for instance, account for 25 percent of all greenhouse gases. And, it has been calculated that each passenger flying roundtrip between Newark and Denver adds nearly a ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
The Political Backdrop
Everything being done now and in the future by the ski resort industry plays out against a national and international backdrop that is political, and ski resorts can hardly be held accountable for the administration’s attitudes and actions toward the Kyoto Protocol, for instance. No one knows now whether a reduction in greenhouse gases in America will come from the voluntary efforts of industries like ours or whether there will be legislatively mandated action in the future. In short, there are no easy solutions for global warming, and little time to find them. In calling for immediate action, critics of the Bush administration say that by delaying action now, some options will be taken off the table. Bush representatives respond that countries and regions without strong economies can not effectively address environmental problems. And as the debate heats up, so does the globe.
