Super hot skiing

Recently, the ski industry has gotten fired up about global warming. But as resorts continue to carve new runs through the forests, the industry's green image is looking like a snow job.

By Dan Oko

Read more: Politics, News, Global Warming

Jan. 26, 2007 | The snowy upper ridges of Vail Mountain offer stunning views of the Colorado Rockies. Below, well-heeled skiers get their thrills on tricky black diamond runs such as Dragon's Teeth and Rasputin's Revenge, enjoying the epic terrain that has made Vail a top resort destination for generations. Along the remote crest, there are no signs of the 1998 fires that made America's largest ski resort one of the country's most famous targets of eco-sabotage. In October of that year, a group of radical activists affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front torched patrol shacks, ski lifts and Vail's mountaintop Two Elk Restaurant. The extremists hoped to derail a controversial proposal to expand skiing into crucial habitat for the endangered Canada lynx. The damage totaled $12 million.

While the arsonists drew unprecedented public attention to the negative environmental impacts of skiing, their efforts had little effect on resort practices. In 2000, Vail opened up its Blue Sky Basin expansion and a groundswell of sympathy for the resort helped expand the number of skiers and snowboarders who lined up to explore the 520 acres of new terrain. Although sections of forest were chopped down to make room for three new high-speed lifts and dense woods were thinned to improve skiing, Vail did close a couple of small pockets of wildlife habitat to skiers. The final twist was that the resort came away from the vandalism enjoying a better environmental reputation than those who had long opposed the expansion.

The Vail incident comes to mind today, as the ski industry is undergoing an about-face on the environment that was almost unimaginable a decade ago. In the past few years, Vail, its swanky neighbor Aspen, and many other leading ski resorts, have become a leading force in addressing the biggest potential calamity facing the modern world: global warming. Which, mind you, is no selfless conversion. If the earth is warming and the snow is melting, there goes the skiing. "As an industry, it's certainly on our mind, and the minds of our guests," says William A. Jensen, co-president of Vail Resorts, and chairman of the National Ski Areas Association, a trade group. "As our customers have become more educated, more concerned, and more impassioned about the environment, we have tried to address their expectations. I care personally about being an environmental steward."

Although that sounds like pure P.R., forward-thinking resorts have earned the respect of major environmental groups. "As an industry, they are light-years ahead on the issue of global warming," says Eben Burnham-Snyder of the National Resources Defense Council, which, since 2003, has worked with NSAA on a global-warming education program called Keep Winter Cool. "The ski industry really understands what global warming means for them."

Yet wary environmentalists, mindful of how Vail burnished its green image after the arson, despite plowing down hundreds of additional forest acres, say it's too soon to start singing hosannas to the ski industry. Given the energy it takes to carry skiers and snowboarders to the slopes, and provide them with places to stay, shop, eat and drink, renewable energy programs seem the least resorts can do. As with car commercials touting the fuel efficiency of new hybrid SUVs, it remains to be seen whether the ski industry's new earth-friendly posture is more than just another greenwash.

Global warming predictions vary, but it's clear to all but climate change skeptics that if current trends persist, most of the world's ski resorts may not survive the next 100 years. Warming trends in Europe this winter prompted officials to cancel races on the World Cup circuit, and the United Nations warns that if temperatures continue to rise, by 2050 Switzerland stands to lose $2.1 billion in annual snow-sports revenue.

The Rocky Mountains are thousands of feet taller on average than the European Alps and more likely to withstand the effects of global warming. But on top of struggling with warmer weather this winter, studies reflect that in the past 50 years the East Coast has seen a 15 percent decrease in snowfall. New research on California's Sierra Nevada range, meanwhile, indicates that if spring temperatures rise by a mere 5 degrees on average, and scientists say they've gained more than 2 degrees since 1950, the Golden State may lose 89 percent of its natural snow pack. Aspen and Park City, Utah, have sponsored their own studies that show winter shrinking by about three weeks over the next 50 years, and this too has got them worried.

Skiing is estimated to be a $4 billion annual industry in the U.S. and so the economic stakes are substantial. That goes for the U.S. government as well. Under special-use permits issued by the Department of Agriculture, 190,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land are managed by ski resorts, positioning skiing and snowboarding as the No. 1 recreational activity on federal lands. After a decade with a flat turnout, American resorts set a record last winter with more than 59 million visits across 15 states. Although federal returns have not been tallied for the past year, the U.S. Treasury in 2005 collected more than $24 million in fees from the 134 resorts that operate on federal land, comprising 60 percent of all ski areas in the U.S. By contrast, the national parks, including Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, command 84 million acres, and accounted for $160 million in 2005. There are differences in the way facilities are run by the National Park Service, a federal agency, but the fact remains that ski resorts pocket 96 percent of the money they earn from lift-ticket sales.

At any rate, the resorts are indeed intent on becoming better stewards on the climate change front. This fall, Vail became the nation's second largest corporate buyer of renewable energy (the largest is Whole Foods), purchasing enough wind power to run 100 percent of its operations, from high-speed chairlifts to condo lighting. Vail will buy about 152,000 hours of wind energy this year, enough power to run 14,000 homes. This past December, the resort received an early Christmas present from the Environmental Protection Agency, which granted it one of its Green Power Leadership Awards.

Similar energy deals are under way at two dozen ski areas in a move to offset carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming. On the East Coast, Sugarbush Resorts in Vermont -- once known as "Mascara Mountain," and a favorite haunt of the Kennedys and their ilk -- has installed energy-efficient nozzles on snow-making equipment, and the resort boasts a "Green Team" to teach skiers about woodland ecology and wildlife.

Aspen has been an industry leader in environmental affairs for close to a decade. On top of being one of the first ski companies to purchase renewable energy to offset its carbon output -- Sugar Bowl in California was the first to attain the goal of buying 100 percent green energy -- Aspen has installed solar panels at one of its slope-side patrol shacks and currently runs its snow-grooming machinery on biodiesel to help minimize toxic emissions. This past September, it joined 12 states and three environmental groups in a Supreme Court suit against the EPA, requiring the agency to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. It also launched an ad campaign called Save Snow, featuring a gloomy magazine ad labeling snow an endangered species, touting its environmental achievements and encouraging skiers to take political action to battle global warming.

As Aspen's director of environmental affairs, Auden Schendler is not fazed by the greenwash label. "We worked for 10 years getting our own house in order before taking this campaign public," he says. "If you know what we're doing, you can't truly understand what we're doing and still call it a greenwash. Some of us are like moles inside this corporation driving these changes, and what we're trying to do is fix an economic system." Schendler is realistic about the effect of recent green developments. "I don't think that putting in rinky-dink solar panels and buying renewable energy is what's going to necessarily make the difference," he says. "We need to use the power of our industry as a platform to do the sorts of things we're seeing the state of California do, in terms of carbon taxes and lobbying the federal government on regulatory controls. Ski resorts need to continue to do these other things on their own, but this is the direction the industry has to be moving in if we're going to make a real difference. We're part of this environmentally damaging business but we're trying to do business in a less damaging way."

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