Heresy Snowboarding

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It’s a funny thing, Climate Change, or Global Warming.
CC seems like something that is intangible, so futuristic – “won’t affect me”. The problem is it’s real, and it’s here, now. Not only is it real, but it looks like it’s a lot worse than anyone could have thought. It might not have an End-of-Days type effect on us now, but our grandkids are not in for a healthy Earth.

People have been warning about it for a long time (James Hansen, NASA, early 80s) and we’ve slowly seen the idea go from being left-field (or wing) proposition to something that is in our faces, now.
It’s been a shocking shift in sentiment to see wholesale acceptance of CC, but even worse, that things are looking a lot, lot worse than we thought. When you have organisations like the UK MET, NASA, Australian CSIRO and Bureau of Meterology (BOM) painting dire pictures, we should all start getting very worried. Sure, we still have some famous deniers, but they’re crackpots, seriously.

We recently held a bushfire fundraiser/company launch in Fiss, Austria.
We originally intended to raise money for a local enviro/conservation effort, but after the Victorian Bushfires, the local Austrian crew wanted to change it to a bushfire fundraiser – fair call (by the way, we ended up raising around $1600AUD or 800EURO).

After the night, I was speaking to Jaye, our rep in Austria, and she said that we would struggle to get the same response to an enviro fundraiser, even if it was for a local cause. “Why is that?”, I thought.

I mean, I read a lot about this stuff; I don’t need convincing. I think, I consider. I have friends who have farms in the country; they’re convinced. My grandparents make the comment they’ve never seen weather (read: climate) like this before, for so long (drought, no rain). Glaciers, Arctic Sea Ice and the Antarctic are melting away and yet people can’t grasp the import. Every day, new evidence comes to light on where we’re headed.

Jaye tells me a response to our 3degrees initiative elicited comments along the lines of: “cllimate change? Snow melt? But that’s why we have snow guns!”. This evidently is quite widespread, at least to the people we talked to. Fortunately, the place we held the night, Dorfstadl, has owners who believe in this too – their comments was that they need snowguns now, whereas they didn’t even just a recently. Snow-guns = electricity and water to make snow – hardly sustainable. They also increase your lift ticket cost.

I find it difficult to cut through the hype, hyperbole and doom-saying (justified) in the press. I read a lot about this, and I mean a lot. A lot of boarders and skiers are busy shredding, or working their bums off for their wage, and that’s cool, but that’s why Heresy exists.

I also find it difficult to cut through all the marketing and BS bling in snowboarding. It feels to me like it’s business as usual, with the exception of a few companies like Mervin. Most companies are helping to drive us off the cliff. I guess it’s easy to forget that without an Earth, there’s no snowboarding, no snow, no anything.

I guess companies like Heresy have to just keep trying to engage people, because our greatest challenge isn’t climate change, it’s indifference. If you don’t care, you’re not going to act.

You need to care.

Check out the following links from Climate Progress, they paint a horrifying picture.

Siberian tundra warming in 2008. Why does this matter? The permafrost contains Gigatonnes of Methane and Carbon (as much carbon that is in the atmosphere, now). Methane is 20-25 times more potent as a GHG than CO2, but doesn’t last as long. If the permafrost keeps melting, it’s going to get very, very interesting.

This report from the UK MET, paints a really bad picture.

Don’t act, 5.5-7.1C temp increase. This would probably mean famine, hundreds of millions dead, no snow season, food shortage, water shortage, environmental refegueeism, war over arable land. Doomsday? Not really.

2. Action now? 2.9-3.8C temp rise. Snow seasons will be badly affected. I should mention that it is widely held that a temp rise on average of 2-3 degrees would be very dangerous for human existence. What do you think that will mean for our snow seasons?

The time to act is right now. We have exactly enough time, starting now.

Check the rest of our blog for more info. Arm yourself with knowledge and act.

Similar Posts:

• Heresy Austrian Bushfire Fundraiser: ~$1600 raised
• Study finds rapid polar ice melt
• Is climate change adaptation expensive?
• How to be hypocritical without being hypocritical
• Our World is Melting, Fast