It has already been a great year in the press for Elemental Herbs’ Activist Athletes. First, Jordan Romero appeared on the Today Show after completing his most recent record-breaking climb. Now Activist Athlete Alison Gannett, a World Champion Extreme Skier and an award winning global cooling consultant, has a great interview about climate change on ESPN.com titled, “Global Weirding.”
Here is a teaser:
Do you think we have begun to see the effects of global warming/weirding?
Today in Colorado, we are seeing record dust storms that are assisting in extremely early snowmelt — up to 40 days earlier than historic records. I don’t think anyone has to be a rocket scientist to see that the weather is a bit weirder than usual. The extremes are just so much more pronounced. It’s January, and I’m going for a bike ride. How strange is that? In Pakistan, I saw glaciers advancing in 2005 due to increased snowfall, and then watched them retreat up to 50 percent by 2007. On one ski expedition it was raining at 17,500 feet — something I have never seen in my lifetime. In Bolivia, I skied the highest ski area in the world at 18,000-plus feet, that glacier disappeared forever in 2009.I remember that you said there was going to be a tipping point of sorts, 1 or 2 degrees, that would really mark the beginning of global weather change and global weirding. Have we reached that point?
In my opinion, we have already passed a critical point in the concentrations of carbon dioxide on our planet. But, I’m an optimist, I believe we have the ability to change.
Ski Magazine named Alison “Ski Hero of the year 2010”, while Outside Magazine named her “A Green All-Star,” next to Leonardo DiCaprio and Arnold Schwarzenegger. On her worldwide ski expeditions, she photo documents climate change. Most importantly, she trains individuals, businesses and governments on her four-step, cost saving, climate change solutions framework. Included in her trainees have been Al Gore’s Climate Project team, business around the world, the ski industry, and the U.S. Congress.
Alison is also the founder of the Save Our Snow Foundation, an organization dedicated to to demonstrating that solutions to climate change can be cost-effective. Alison — and Save Our Snow — believe that we can actually increase profitability while reducing pollution, increasing energy security and green sector jobs, while also saving our snowpack and our planet’s ecosystems.
And that’s not all. In 2004, Alison also founded the Office for Resource Efficiency (ORE). A non-profit, ORE is aimed at calculating and reducing the Crested Butte, Colorado watershed’s carbon footprint by working with three local towns, one county, one ski area, local schools, a college, and local citizens. The Equilibrium Fund, of which Alison is on the board, is working with Central American women on food security, poverty alleviation, carbon sequestration, and leadership development. And she also runs Rippin Chix steep skiing camps and Mountain Bike skills camps – to build self-confidence through fun skills development for women and girls.
Sports have changed Alison’s life, bringing her health, happiness, confidence, and passion; and this is her inspiration for sharing her experience with others. She lives in Crested Butte, CO, in a house that she built with local materials and local straw bales, powered by solar electric and solar hot water. With four energy audits under her belt, she has cut its energy use in half in 10 years.
Elemental Herbs partners with Alison and the Save Our Snow Foundation to help spread the word on simple ways to help reduce our impact on global climate change.
To read the rest of the article on ESPN.com, click here.
