Sustainability of the skiing world

Just to warn anyone who reads this (I am writting this after I have written the thread below)... I may have gotten carried away, and I appologize for the length. there is a lot that is on my mind, but I tried to only mention things that are important to skiing,
Perhaps it belongs in the 'articles' section, but does anyone really go there?


I've been reading up on a bunch of geological and economical stuff about our world and society... the word 'sustainable' seams to be said by everyone more and more... but sustainability of the ski world isn't really talk about much, is that because we all know that the skiing world (not just the industry, but the entire sport/hobby/etc) is in jepordy.

everyone's always talking about climate change and global warming and all that shit... well, hate it or not, the amount of carbon dioxide being pumped into the air is being done so at a rate that is far faster than the earth can absorb it... and it's scientificly proven that more carbon dioxide and methane gas's does heat up the atmosphere. So if we continue on at this rate than we will soon be in a world without winter (soon in geological terms, not like in 5 years, but more like 50 or 100 or 1000, or fuck, maybe a million)... but the average temperature of the planet is rising.

but there is something interesting about the fact I just mentioned... almost all of the carbon dioxide that is being pumped into the air is being done so by burning non-renuable resorces such as oil and coal. now, (as we should all know by now) the rate at which we are consuming oil is huge... and if we continue on like this for much longer than, well...
just think about what would happen to society if we ran out of oil before we could live without it. The result would probably be worse than any epidemic nature would try to throw at us.

so, driving enviromentally safe cars (or if you live in a urban area, don't even drive, just take public trasit - unless of course you're going skiing in the mountains, but than - pick up that hitch hiker along the way, you'll be saving the planet by car pooling. better design your house so that it needs less heating and less air conditioning... but there are things that are out of our hands as an individual. for example: of every 100 units of energy created at the power plant, 91% of that energy is lost in the grid. deforestation of old growth forests will not only hurt the environment but also hurt the economy if we don't change our methods of logging (clearcuting is cheap and easy, but since when was anything good easy? I don't know how to change these things as an individual, but perhaps if we all stand up to the man than we could get something done.

Don't support a government that goes to war for oil for they are the ones destroying this planet, and don't think for one second that George W. Bush is personally responable for the actions by the American government... do you really think one man has that much power in today's world. George W. Bush is just a friendly face for the world to relate with... it would be as foolish to think that the Pilsbury Doughboy is the creator of easy bake cookies.

Canada tried to ban Shell from selling their gas in it's country because of chemicals that are present in their gas that is very hamefull to the environment, so Shell sued the country of Canada (on U.S. soil) and won. So now Canada has no choice but to allow Shell to sell their product on it's soil. Does that make any fucking sence?
Now, I am not saying that the United States is to blame for all of the worlds problems... china is one of the worlds largest polluters, and sometime in the not to distant future will be the largest polluter in the world.

now - that being said, we must also understand that there are many misteries about our planet that we are not yet aware of... for example - did you know that although the appalacian mountains are still growing (in a way)? yes, they used to be much larger in the past (like 250 million years ago), but as errosion brings them down, they are infact being pushed up... think of it like this: as the river errodes the river valley, the river is not dropping in elevation, but the mountains around them are lifting up - it is like an iceburg, ice is 90% as dence as water so, 90% of an iceburg is submerged, and if you take a piece of the iceburg that is above the water away, than the iceburg will lift to corect the balance... it is the same with mountains, except that mountains lie around the 67% mark, and the water is the lithosphere.

so if we are still learning about how our planet interects with itself, how are we to say that we can change it's path. perhaps the climate and the inhabitance of the planet have always been interconected and it is fate that the world will heat up... I mean, what do we know, the acceleration in the heating of the planet could be a natural thing that happensn approximately 20 000 years after the peak of an ice age, and there is nothing we can do as humans to stop it, no matter how massive of an effort we put forth. So would everything we do to save winter be in vain? noone could answer that. but what I do know is that I will not accept doing nothing. I will not sit around and watch at the planet (and the seasons) get destroyed. I will fight so that my kids may have a chance to ski.

if not for yourself, do it for your sport.