Extreme snowboarder, filmmaker and owner of his own apparel brand Jeremy Jones never dreamed of becoming a lobbyist.
More comfortable in a snowboard bib and puffy jacket than in a suit and tie, the laid-back Jones has quietly become a force on Washington’s corridor of power. was collected.
protect our winterFounded in 2007 by Jones, the group brings together winter athletes to advocate for climate issues and has steadily expanded its influence over the past decade. His POW, made up of climbers, skiers, and other outdoor athletes, has played a small but important role in passing the inflation-cutting bill, which will cost him $370 billion in climate change and clean energy programs. rice field.
However, the group’s origins were rather humble.
“Somebody has to do something about this,” Jones recalled thinking about 2005. He said he started watching
So Jones decided that “someone” was him. In time, he began calling out climate scientists, telling him he needed to use his celebrity to demand federal law.
Jones has done this largely by building coalitions of skiers and snowboarders, backpackers and cyclists, what he calls “outdoor states.”
These advocates speak to the economic importance of recreation in a way that resonates with politicians who tend to prioritize jobs over endangered species. As Jones put it, “You don’t go to the Capitol with a picture of a polar bear.”
For Jones, the Inflation Reduction Act was a sweet victory. POW was in short supply during the 2010 cap-and-trade debacle, when the Obama administration prioritized health care over climate.
The defeat set back the climate movement for at least a decade, but made conservative Democrats from coal-producing countries unlikely champions.
Many outside groups and individual Democratic senators have managed to sway Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.
Contents of the Inflation Control Law
Executives at Snowshoe Mountain, West Virginia’s largest ski area, caught Manchin’s attention when they informed him that outdoor recreation was the second engine of the state’s economy. Patty Duncan, the resort’s president and chief operating officer, spoke in favor of the law. The Charleston Gazette-Mail Opinion Essay.
After the law was passed, the White House invited POW representatives to a ceremony in September.
one of the attendees Dani Reyes-Acostaa multisport athlete who calls herself an “uphill snowboarder” because of both the physical terrain she snowboards on and the metaphorical terrain she navigates as a climate activist.
Reyes-Acosta said it was “unrealistic” to share her concerns with a National Park Service official she met in Washington.
She recently moved to rural Southwest Colorado. There, she draws on her background as a Latina from her Valley in Central California.
“My mother’s family was the first generation not to forage,” she said. As such, she highlights how climate change is threatening not just outdoor recreation in the mountains, but downstream agriculture.
“Adventure feeds our souls, but food feeds our bellies.”
more dangerous environment
For Jones and his allies, their survival may depend on a stable climate.edge of the earthhe and several other top winter athletes skied and snowboarded down a 10,000-foot glacier mountain in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park.
An unusual ocean snowstorm delayed their arrival on land, and unseasonable temperatures turned the base camp into a sweltering slush, nearly dooming the project to failure.
One of the athletes Jones has worked with is Tommy Caldwell, one of the most famous rock climbers on the planet.
Caldwell has lived a wild life. He was kidnapped in Kyrgyzstan and lost part of his finger on a table saw. In his 19 days in 2015, he became one of his two first to climb El Capitan’s legendary 3,000-foot Dawnwall. Only one other climber of his has repeated the feat. In the process, returning to the same places year after year, I noticed the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle ways that climate change is changing the mountains.
Outdoor meccas like Chamonix in the French Alps are no longer reliably blanketed in winter. Yosemite Valley’s climbing season shifted from October to November because of the heat. And in Patagonia, where climbers and mountaineers challenge legendary mountains like Fitzhi Roy, Caldwell named his son Fitz.
In many cases, when the ice holding the rocks together melts, “chunks can fall and die,” Caldwell said.
Turning point?
Climate policy appears to have reached an inflection point in the United States after years of being a second- or third-rate issue for voters.
Young Americans regularly tell pollsters that climate change is one of their top concerns, and President Biden makes extravagant promises he struggled to deliver during the 2020 campaign. I was guided as follows.
In Alaska’s recent House special election, centrist Democrat Mary Peltra defeated former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to support voters on declining fish stocks and rising temperatures while supporting economic development. expressed concern.
All of Peltra’s approaches to discussing climate change above are exactly what some Democrats have been asking for for years. One of them is Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado. and the craft beer entrepreneur who won a seat in 2020 for tying Republican opponent Corey Gardner to Donald Trump’s climate policy.
Last winter, Colorado resident Caldwell took Hickenlooper on a Clear Creek Canyon mountaineering trip to introduce him to POW work.
Hickenlooper, who had a “lifelong” fear of heights, said in an interview that he found the experience “terrifying”.
He likened reducing climate change to nudging up a large granite wall like the face of El Capitan that made Caldwell famous beyond rock climbing circles.
“It can feel daunting at first, but take it one step at a time,” said Hickenlooper.
POW’s secret weapon is Alex Honnold, made famous by the movie Free Solo. The film depicts Yosemite’s El He Capitan climbing without ropes. In 2019, POW sent a delegation, including Honnold, to Washington to harness the public interest in cinema.
That year, I went to a rooftop party in Washington. There, Caldwell, Honnold, Jones, and other famous athletes marveled at how Miller had just thrown back his genuine bottle of his draft and testified before Congressional hearings. As Honnold told me at the time, “I live in a van most of the time, so it’s pretty wild.”
Honnold’s fame is particularly effective at speaking to hard-to-reach deputies, just as his long limbs and unique amygdala lead other climbers to risk confessing.
“Every Republican senator I’ve met loves Alex,” Caldwell said.
Love has not yet been converted into votes. The closest a captive has to a Republican supporter on the Capitol is Utah Rep. John Curtis, leader of the House Conservative Climate Committee.
Curtis is a strong Republican neighborhood just outside Salt Lake City, home to some of the most popular ski areas in the country, including Alta and Deer Valley.
He attended the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland last year, and a former member of his staff attended a POW retreat outside Reno, Nevada this summer. And on his two occasions this spring and summer, POW arranged for Curtis to meet with a group of Olympians to listen to climate and energy issues.
But despite a noticeable shift in the number of Republican politicians speaking out on renewable energy and other climate-related topics, Republicans did not vote for the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We are at a tipping point, but not yet,” warned Hickenlooper.
what to read tonight
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According to Lisa Leller and Jonathan Weisman, Republicans have stepped up their focus on crime and public safety in the midterm elections, flooding the airwaves with violent imagery in an attempt to turn the nation’s political debate in their favor. I am letting
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In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano is outsold by his Democratic rival governor, has not run a TV ad since May and trails by double digits in popular polls , reports Reed Epstein.
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President Biden’s plan to sharply cancel the student loan debt of tens of millions of borrowers could cost about $400 billion, Katie Rogers reports.
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Adam Liptak called on a group of legislative Supreme Court justices to make an unusual petition to the Supreme Court to overrule a Republican-held legal doctrine that gives state legislatures extraordinary powers.
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