Science Friday - Degrees of Change: Tourism. Aug 30, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: August 30, 2019

Each year, outdoor enthusiasts in the country spend nearly $900 billion dollars on hiking, fishing and other types of outdoor recreation. The different types of business that take part in that tourism economy span a wide range—from big all inclusive ski resorts to mom and pop shops that sell tours of their local hiking spots.  But with shrinking snowpacks, more extreme weather, and the unpredictable changes from season to season, these businesses must wrestle with a challenge: climate change. Winter tourism operations are adding on summer water sports to stay afloat, while the number of ski resorts have dwindled almost in half since the 1950s. How will these local businesses adapt? In Capital Public Radio’s podcast TahoeLand, reporter Ezra David Romero investigates how the community of Lake Tahoe in California, which sees 30 million tourists each year, is responding to these changes. Romero talks with Ira about how a pair of residents are trying to establish the area as the “Outdoor Capital of the World” in order to expand outdoor activities that can take place between the big winter and summer tourism seasons. He discusses how local businesses, from casinos to sleigh ride operators, are re-envisioning how they will operate in the future. Daniel Scott, who studies the effects of climate change on tourism, joins the conversation to discuss how the ski resorts are implementing different attractions that can be used year round. And Mario Molina from Protect Our Winters talks about how his organizations trains professional athletes and businesses that depend on the outdoors to become advocates for sustainable practices and policies. Plus, all eyes are on the Atlantic this week as Hurricane Dorian makes its way towards Florida. While Puerto Rico was spared the brunt of the storm, the hurricane still comes at a time when both Florida and Puerto Rico are especially vulnerable to storms. Rebecca Leber, climate and environment reporter at Mother Jones, joins Ira to discuss why—and the contributions a changing climate has to storms such as Dorian. They’ll also talk about other climate stories from recent days, including statements from presidential candidates regarding their climate policy plans, the sailboat arrival of climate activist Greta Thunberg in New York, and a federal rule change that would loosen restrictions on methane gas emissions. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Broadcasting today from the studios of WSHU in Fairfield, Connecticut. The climate is changing, and because we need to deal with it now, we open the next chapter of our series, Degrees of Change. The series explores the challenges of a changing climate and how we as a planet and a people are adapting. And we want to hear from you, too. Tell us how your community is adapting.

Go to ScienceFriiday.com slash degrees of change to get involved. This week, we're talking about how the tourism and recreation businesses are having to adapt from ski resorts to casinos. That's coming up shortly. But first up this week, we check in on the gatekeepers, the decision makers, the controllers of the purse strings. The election season continues on, with many of the Democratic candidates slated for a town hall on climate policy next. week, but still no climate debate. My next guest is here to help me navigate that story and other climate policy news. Rebecca Lieber is a climate and environment reporter for Mother Jones based out of Washington. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me on. Rebecca, it has been a busy

week on the campaign trail with several candidates bowling out of the race, including Jay Inslee, who made the climate his signature issue, didn't he? He did. He did. He, earned the nickname the climate candidate. And so do you think that his campaign shifted, perhaps, the conversation on climate? I think it did have an impact, though. It's a bit hard to quantify. A lot of people pointed to his low poll numbers as reason why he didn't have an impact. But I think he did force the conversation and focus it on climate change in ways that we haven't seen in past cycles, just by having a very thorough climate policy and in fact he had six thorough climate policy raised the bar for activists

to then go back to the other campaigns and ask where are your climate plans and in other news senator sanders gave us more details about his climate plans didn't he he did i think it was interesting the timing that he the morning after insley dropped out he announced his own climate plan that has been long awaited. It's been rumored for about a year and out that he was working on his own Green New Deal. And it was really interesting for a few reasons. One, it's an incredibly ambitious plan in that he wants to spend $16 trillion to fight climate change, as well as tie in his social agenda and inequality into those programs. But it was also interesting for how he announced it that he chose to unveil the plan in Paradise, California, the site of these massive

wildfires last year. I was there with Sanders, and you could just see the WDW. We were literally surrounded by rubble and rusted cars. And I think that's a different environment that we're in for the 2020 race, that the candidates are now connecting the real-time impacts to the policy. Yeah, because in, you know, in 2016, hardly anybody talked about, climate change. It wasn't even a question on the debates. Yeah, that's changed a lot. I think the shift in frame from thinking climate is another issue to tack

onto a laundry list to really taking the center stage and consistently showing up at the top of polling as one of the top issues for Democratic voters. The candidates have to talk about it. And I think we're seeing a lot more animation around this. Next week, CNN has another climate town hall schedule, but there is still no climate debate of its own as some of the candidates have wanted to, right? Right. Most of the candidates have now called for a climate change debate.

In fact, this was Jay Inslee's major push that he won't benefit from, but the DNC leadership itself has resisted that call for a debate. Just last week, they declined to endorse a debate in a series of resolutions that came up that activists have really pushed for, and instead we're getting a few forums. And what activists didn't really want here was what we ended up getting is a seven-hour CNN forum that's coming up next week, where 10 candidates will go in depth around these issues, but, At the same time, the goal for having a debate was to widen the audience for climate change issues. And I don't think you're going to get that with a seven-hour forum. That's politics, right? Trying to put square pegs in round holes.

Right, you can't please everyone. That is amazing. This week, all eyes are on Hurricane Dorian, Puerto Rico, was spared the brunt, but Florida may be facing a real crisis, right? They're talking at this point about a hurricane three or four hitting the coastline. Right. And what's important to remember is that the category of hurricanes doesn't always tell you how deadly it is. And the things to remember about how impactful this storm could be, you look for the storm surge, which is very poorly timed. Florida is facing especially high tides now. And that also a signal for how vulnerable an area is is the last time they saw a hurricane. There's a thing called storm amnesia where people might downplay the effects of the hurricane

because they didn't live through a recent experience. And Florida, as we know, has overbuilt in very vulnerable coastal enemy is number one example in the country for this gap in real estate development. and the climate science. And it's really this combination of factors that make parts of Florida, especially vulnerable to this hurricane. Do you think people may look at how strong this hurricane is

and maybe connected a little bit about the warnings we got about upcoming storms for climate change that we might see fewer of them, but they will be stronger ones? And this might be one of those instances. Yeah, I think really just the last few years, these massive storms making landfall have raised awareness for climate change. I think it's not a coincidence that climate change has surged to the top of the political debates.

At the same time, we've seen more areas suffer from these disasters. At the same time, attribution science has played a really big role here in changing how we talk about these storms. The science around this telling us in near real time, worse climate change and rising seas has made these storms is has evolved a lot the last few years and in the past we had to talk about trends here and how climate shifts the baseline and I think the science has now given us a language to say well this is how much worse climate change has made this storm and let's talk about some of the areas that were being threatened besides Florida looks like Puerto Rico has escaped this hit, but they are extra vulnerable to storms right now, aren't they?

Right. If you're, you just recovered or have not yet recovered from a storm, it makes you far more vulnerable. You just don't have the infrastructure put in place, the recovery efforts and emergency responders in place to make that recovery that much quicker. So Puerto Rico, it was very fortunate that I did not experience a direct hit from this storm because that even more deadly than it would be had had they not just suffered from a deadly storm. I will have to see how this shakes out the next few days and hope that this this storm doesn't have too deadly a path. Let's move on to other environmental news this week is something, another major news story, the White House, talked about changing the way the EPA deals with greenhouse gas methane,

taking away some of the restrictions on emissions. Yeah, the EPA has obviously taken aim at a lot of climate regulations from the Obama era, and this one was its methane regulations on oil and gas. And methane is a huge deal because it's a potent greenhouse gas that is more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide. And this has long gone unregulated, even as fracking infrastructure has exploded in the U.S. The Trump administration, it's been clear, has not wanted to see these climate regulations in place. And yesterday announced that it is rolling back methane emissions that we already knew were a major target. target. What's interesting here is the Trump administration went beyond what even the oil and gas

industry or parts of it wanted. This is a regulation that had a lot of mixed reaction, but the Trump administration, of course, they portrayed this as a win for economic development when the facts out there are far more mixed. Yeah, because I had heard some of the gas industry spokespeople saying, you know, we could at least say that there are restrictions on what we can do. Now, if there are not those stringent restrictions, people will start blaming us for, you know, possible methane gas pollution. Yeah, let's remember where these regulations came from. It was on the heels of major methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure that really

raised public awareness around this problem. The industry has had a few different lines. One is that they can fix this problem itself. Methane is a fuel. It is natural gas. So they said they have an incentive to reduce these leaks. The problem is gas is also cheap and they have not gone far enough to reduce those leaks themselves. And that's why regulations like this one were needed to force an even playing field for the industry to address these leaks.

leaks throughout its operations. And finally, a really interesting activist story, Greta Thunberg's arrival in New York. She sailed across the ocean in a sailboat. And just in time for that big climate meeting in the city. Yeah, Greta's been this instant star of the climate change movement who has, I think, prompted a lot of debate in that two-week journey on a solar

powered yacht where she was trying to raise attention that we each have a greenhouse gas footprint flying planes as one of the most intensive activities you could do. So she sailed across the ocean. She made landfall in New York yesterday this week to a big fanfare, and I think she's attracted a lot of attention and will continue to make a difference and make an impact. with her speech at the WDWU on summit. Rebecca Lieber, Mother Jones, based out of Washington. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, how communities are adapting

to climate change. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. The LeBreday weekend is the unofficial mark of the end of summer. Beach time and camping activities will be swapped out for fall foliage hikes and those glistening snow skiing mountains.

These businesses depend on a reliable stream of tourist So how will climate change change all that? How will smaller snow packs and more extreme weather affect these communities? And how will they adapt? What do you do if you run a ski slope and you don't have any snow? It has happened. That is the question that reporter Ezra David Romero wanted to understand. In his podcast called Tahoe Land, he investigates how all of this is happening in the Lake Tahoe area,

and he joins us now. As with David Romero, he joins us from Capital Public Radio. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me, Ira. And we can all listen to the Taholand podcast at capradio.org slash Taholand. For those of us who aren't familiar with Lake Tahoe, give us a little idea of the area. Why did tourists visit the area now? Yeah, so Lake Tahoe is at about 6,200 feet in the Sierra Nevada.

It's this huge lake that has 72 miles of shoreline. and it's surrounded by pine trees and it has about 20 communities. You know, people go there in the winter because it's a winter wonderland. You know, there's snow, there's all these ski resorts, there's all these places to sled and have a good time. But then in the summer and fall, and even now part of the winter,

there's so many sunny days where you can get out into the water, this crystal clear blue color, which it's known for. And then there's all kinds of hikes and rock climbing and everything you can imagine to do outside, You can do there. So they're basically really seeing a change in the habitat of Lake Tahoe. Yeah, there is this idea that winters are getting shorter and summers are getting longer in places like Lake Tahoe as an effect of global greenhouse gas emissions. It's like it's happening to Lake Tahoe.

And in our podcast, Tahoe Land, we unpack this. We talk about everything from there's this challenge that climate changes. it's challenging the fight to keep Lake Tahoe blue. And you know, Tahoe's known for being one of the clearest lakes in the entire world. And it's also challenging invasive species. It's causing them to flourish. And then it's also like the snowpack is retreating. And it's also this variability in weather.

There's so many more warm storms. And that affects snow and tourism and bears and on and on and on and on. So I guess this is affecting or altering people's habits of visiting. Right? Yeah. People are, you know, when I grew up, I grew up near going to Reno. My grandparents live there and we'd go and it would be this winter place. People would go there to ski and to snowboard and that's what I had in my mind of it.

But now it's this place that people go all year round to do all kinds of things. And it was that then, but it's becoming that even more. You know, people are experiencing Tahoe in a new way and they're not going there for the casinos around the Lake. the lake necessarily all the time. They're going there to get outdoors and experience Tahoe in a different way that's not necessarily have to do with snow. In fact, in your podcast, you talked to a group looking to re-envision Tahoe, right? Yeah, there's these two guys, Chris McNamara and Corey Rich. You know, they're sort of these Bay Area bandits, right? They used to live in the Bay Area and now they live in Tahoe. They've been

there about 10 years or so. And what they want to do is they, they're want this area to become the outdoor capital of the world and I think they've actually already bought that branding so let's hear from one of them Chris the idea seems simple which is this should just be the outdoor capital of the world this should be an economy based around all the sustainable recreation that's possible to do here so that when there is a bad snow year or when the economy tanks the community doesn't get hammered like it has over the couple decades when those things happen.

Hmm. So how are they trying to transform the area then? So the idea is this. There's about between 19 and 29 million people that visit Tahoe every year. That's way more than Disneyland. And so their idea is they want to boost the economy and bring in funds and energy to capitalize on all the sunny days that are in Tahoe. So basically they want to bring in companies, bring in businesses that will sort of transition the economy. from being this place that's all banked on tourism to things that are like banked on tech or other kinds of businesses in the region. And so that for that, for example, one of them has a global photography and video company, right? And so they want to have people base there with access close to big cities like San Francisco, Sacramento, and Reno, with airports and good transportation.

And there's even a space called co-work Tahoe there that's already doing this on a Mac on a micro level where they're trying to bring in big tech companies. or tech-related places there. So you can do your tech during the day. You can buy a house in South Lake Tahoe or somewhere, and then you can hit the slopes or go on the lake and get in your kayak, and you can have the best of both worlds. So they want to make you live there more instead of visit more? Yeah. Most people go there to visit for a day or a couple hours or they're passing through, but

they want people to call Tahoe home. Yeah. other big draws to Tahoe is a casino. Are all the casinos there? You think of the smoky blackjack tables, not of the outdoors, so where you're inside, you're not outside. How was a casino affected by climate change? Yeah, so the idea is going back to this idea of summer, summer's getting longer, you know, and then it comes back to this idea, like first there's Indian gaming that kind of put the casinos that threaten Lake Tahoe. But then now with climate change and more

visitors and people coming here to be outdoors, the casinos that I spoke with said they're having to re-envision how they operate. They're having to re-envision how they market. And they're actually having to work together instead of being sort of this lone star, like Wild West mentality. Because at one point Lake Tahoe was one of a handful of places in the U.S. that had gambling, legal gambling. And so with that changing, they're having to adapt.

And that's sort of what I've noticed in all my reporting, that Tahoe is in a state of adaptation. And I talked to someone about these casinos, her name's Stacy Noyes. She's the president of the lakeside in a casino. And she said they're doing something interesting. They are having to work together. So let's hear her. The most significant noticeable portion of what we've adapted to is we're working together. It used to be fierce competition and we shared no information and we certainly wouldn't share

employees. Our size, I think, lets us be pretty nimble as a community to change directions or take risk to accomplish change. That's quite interesting. I want to bring on another guest that you and that you Ezra talked to in the Tahoe Land podcast to talk about how one of the biggest businesses in the area will have to adapt. And of course I'm talking about ski resorts and snow resorts, snow sports. Daniel Scott is the executive director of the interdisciplinary center on climate change and

professor, geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Welcome to Science Friday. Good afternoon, Ira. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Now there are many factors that can go into the tourism economy. It's not just the tourists. What about what the other components of the tourism industry that will be affected by climate change? Well it's the the whole entire sector. Everything from transporting people, people have to be engaged in tourism. They have to go places. So the transportation section or segment of the industry right now we've got a great ability in California's leader in that space in terms of decarbonizing ground-based transport, your automobile fleet, etc. You can have

that run on an electric grid. That can be decarbonized and buses. Cities are experimenting with their bus fleets. The tourism industry is doing the same. The one challenge they have there is from aviation. We still don't have a way to either electrify well or come up with alternative fuel so that's still a segment that's struggling a little bit with how to become part of that decarbonized tourism and economy of the future then you get into the actual attractions anything from ski resorts losing your beach glaciers changing the Great Barrier Reef being bleached heavily so the attractions that bring people to places and then as you mentioned you've got a

storm heading for Florida you get big storms in the Caribbean cat fours and fives they can decimate their infrastructure that takes years to rebuild in some cases. So it's the entire supply chain right through to the entire experience for tourists. Now, of course, skiing and boarding depend on snow. Can you give us an idea of just how the snowfall has been changing and is predicted to change in Tahoe? Yeah, I mean, that's been a question I've been asked a lot about not just Tahoe, but across the United States. And for the longest time, the answer I was giving to the media and others was often, got perplexed looks. They knew it was warming and I said, but ski seasons were actually getting

longer from the 80s to the 90s and then the 90s to the 2000s, even though temperature, average temperatures were warming, our ski seasons throughout the United States were getting longer. It's because of the massive investment in snowmaking. So that's one of those adaptations that you've been talking about. The interesting thing is we, as I talked to Ezra about, we've finally seen this decade, that's tipped down the other way. So for the first time in the last 30 to 40 years, Ski seasons are actually getting on average shorter across the United States, even with the massive snowmaking we've got. So we may have seen a peak skiing era where snowmaking can no longer keep up with the amount of warming that we're seeing. Ezra, you've tackled that in your reporting. What have you seen?

Yeah, I was going to say, so California, Nevada's known for variables and weather, right? We're known for having wet years and dry years, big snow packs and little snow packs, droughts and wet times. But all the climate scientists I talked with even Daniel has talked about how that variability is getting worse. There's going to be wetter, wetter years and drier, drier years. We've seen that in the past decade with five years of drought and then two of the largest snow packs we've ever had in California. And that does a number of things to these ski resource like they can't open because there's too much snow or there's too little snow. And then there's the Desert Research Institute in Reno. I talked to some of their scientists, and they say that as meant the snowpack is moving actually up the upslope at about as many as 200 feet a year.

And so that has a direct effect on businesses that rely on that snowpack. And then all of that, and the third thing that they're seeing is more rain instead of snow. So it's kind of like a gamble or stacking a deck of cards. You're just putting a bunch more storms into the deck. And so there's more variability and it's more of a gamble in the end. And so all that has a direct effect on Tahoe's tourism industry that just focuses on snow. Daniel, if there's too little snow, if it's warmer, why can't you, because it's not snowing, why can't you just make more snow like they do in ski areas?

Yeah, I mean, that is one of the principal adaptations increasingly around the world, even in Europe and other parts of the world here in Canada for sure. It's been part or a central part of the industry for 25 to even 30 years in some parts like New England. So that's something they have done. What we're seeing now, though, is at certain times the year, particularly early in the winter, so that crucial Christmas and New Year holiday, where for some resorts, that's 25% of their revenue, the temperatures are still too warm. So January, February, they're pretty reliable in many years, but it's that early season,

when the temperatures are actually just too warm to actually make the snow, not just economically, but they physically just can't make it anymore. Daniel, you're talking about the night time lows, right? Yeah, that's typically when a ski area will make the snow. You get your temperature minimums at night. And often electricity rates are lower at that time, too. So that's when they try to make most of their snow. But as they get closer and closer to Christmas,

we have this what we call sort of an emergency snowmaking period where they want to get open to get ready for that holiday. So they'll spend the extra money. They'll do it during the day. if the temperatures are there, and unfortunately, many times that's not even the case. We're talking about our Degrees of Change series, that's Tourism and Climate Change, on Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I want to read, we had a listener, Write Us from Michigan,

who was also seeing these types of changes. Edward Bobin-Chack says, we live near Roscommon, Michigan in the middle of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Our area is dependent on winter vacationing for ORVs, snowmobiling, skiing, and ice fishing. Many businesses in our area have seen a marked decrease in winter business over the past few years. A number of longtime businesses have even closed. Ezra, has you seen that in your reporting?

Yeah, I mean, they close, for example, like the ski resorts will close when there's too much snow or too little snow, right? And they just, these places, if you drive around the lake, you'll see how dependent this place is on snow. There's businesses of all sorts that open and close their doors as the snow fluctuates. And so more and more of these people are going to be taking it on the chin as the way the wind blows, the way the snow blows. Are the ski areas, Daniel, are they adding different attractions to make up for the loss? Yeah, that's one of their other sort of principal adaptation strategies. And you've alluded to it a little bit. Tahoe is well down that pathway.

And a good example in Canada is Whistler, which is known as a world-class ski resort. But I think two years ago, what they call their green season, which is your spring, fall, summer. There's green season visitation actually surpassed their winter visitation. And they've been putting a lot of money into different types of attractions, anything from conference centers to spas, the usual types of things in town. But also getting people up into the mountains in different ways. So they've invested a lot to continue to use their lift capacity to take mountain bikers up. And they now rent mountain bikes and the protective equipment and all of that, the same way you would for skis. So, and they have a bigger plan.

I think it's a billion dollar investment. I can't remember over how many years. But again, to diversify that type of their tourism to make it full season instead of just a ski resort. Have you been seeing this in Tahoe, Ezra, the same thing on that? And so in Tahoe, they're doing some of that, or they, for example, Heavenly, it's a ski resort by Vail. They have a big, like, bike track they have in the summertime, and they also have, like, you can do, like, ropes course and things like that.

So they're trying to make the mountain for all seasons, essentially, and that's happening all over the place in Tahoe. But it's also, all of that comes down to funds and dollars, you know, these big companies that have 12, 18 resorts around the country in the. world, they have the dollars to invest, to buy green energy, like to buy a wind farm, to fuel all their stuff, to have the snow machines, to shoot the, to make the snow, to do all these kind of things. But the other places that I've talked to, like the small resorts, say, you know, they got to feel the pain a lot more before they can actually make these

investments, or maybe they'll just close shop all together because they don't have the dollars in their bank accounts to actually do these changes. Yeah, it's much easier for the big guys to survive, then. little guys. We're going to have to take a break, and when we come back, we will talk more with Ezra David Romero, host of Tahoe Land. He's an environment reporter at Capitol Public Radio in Sacramento, and also Daniel Scott, Executive Director, Interdisciplinary Center on Climate Change. He is professor of geography and environmental management, University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. We'll take a break, and we'll talk about, this is, you know, just part of our

degrees of change series where we're talking about how we have to adapt now. You know, we have changes happening to the climate. Some people are calling it now not climate change, but climate crisis. Maybe that is a better phrase than just climate change. So stay with us. We'll be back with our degrees of change series focusing this week on tourism and climate change. Stay with us. We'll be right back after the break. You're listening to Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. We're talking this hour about how climate change affects tourism and the recreation industry talking with Ezra David Romero, host of Tahoe Land, and Daniel Scott, Executive Director of Interdisciplinary Center on Climate Change,

and he's also a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Let's continue where we left off. Ezra, building more trails and roads is more than just a business can do. How do the communities, like Lake Tahoe, support these changes? Yeah, well, I want to touch on something about how these projections are supposed to be really huge in Tau. There's this draft climate change vulnerability assessment for the region that's coming out soon. And in that, they're talking about how the Taho area ski areas are projected to lose $300 million in revenues annually.

That's in like the most extreme climate scenario. And then the medium one, it's like $140 million a year. And so that's affecting the ski resorts. And with that big of a dent, it's supposed to affect actually. everything. And that's why the city of South Lake Tahoe and other places around the lake are doing everything from bringing in electric scooters, you know, to get people out of their cars and then onto the road, onto trails. And then there's also this commitment to renewable energy by 2032 in some of these communities. And then there's also this grassroots movement to get people in positions of power on platforms of climate change in the Tahoe region. And that's because they don't always feel like they're not. national representation believes in climate change and so they want to do things on what they can on their own and so for example it's having on the city council and school boards and public utilities and then the Forest Service is amending how they deal with opening

and closing trails and restrooms because longer summers you know interrupt when they usually close these places and so they're finding all this trash and all this stuff on these trails and their climate change is forcing them to change their own rules Are there other businesses that rely on the snowpack beside the ski industry? Yeah, everything from people who clean roads to tourists, to hotels, to restaurants. I mean, the whole economy there is based on snow when it's snowing or when there's not even snow. It's still based on that. And so every sector of society in Tahoe is looking at snow because it's their livelihood.

And it's one thing that they can't change. You know, it's a symptom of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And so they're living with these effects. They have to adapt or they're not going to make it is what I hear in my reporting. And some people just can't meet ends anymore, right? And the employment and staffing. Exactly. We met this, I met this guy named the Borges Slay Ride Company in South Lake Tahoe.

And he was telling me that in 2018, he didn't have one sleigh ride. because it didn't snow enough. There wasn't enough snow at lake level for them to operate. And, you know, his thought was like they were going to have to close down and not do it. But they're adapting, and now he does carriage rides. You know, and so, like, there's points of adaptation, but it gets to a certain place where you cannot operate in places like this. Well, Daniel, are the businesses you talked thinking about this

and how to adapt sustainability, or are they just trying to hold on? A bit of both. All businesses have to focus on the next quarter of the next year. So they do have that short-term planning, you know, and they have to from a business perspective, the communities. But some of the bigger, as Ezra had mentioned, some of the bigger corporates here is they can have a bit of that longer view. And they can look at their different properties and say, well, which ones do we want to divest from? And where do we want to invest to make our business the most climate resilient? And they have to, and they're seeing that sort of writing on the wall from the financial markets. They're actually requiring them to disclose their climate risk increasingly on different stock markets around the world.

So publicly traded companies will have to take that sort of longer view and have that consideration. The vulnerability, and both of you have talked about this a little bit, is the smaller mum and pop type businesses, whether you're in snowmobiling, sleigh rides or a smaller ski area, one or two, three bad years in succession, and your capital reserves are gone. You can't get insurance. You're out of business. And the bigger players, they can afford those couple bad years

and then take advantage of the good years. We had a listener write in with a question. Sarah Shrichti who says, on Donner Summit in California, our wastewater treatment plant was upgraded to meet stringent state wastewater discharge mandates. The Donner Summit Public Utility District includes five winter resorts,

every one of which is investing in snowmaking in order to make up for drought years and late winter starts. The district is now providing treated effluent for snowmaking, but a lot of energy is going into extending this California industry in the face of climate. They can't seem to support it.

Any comments for either of you on that? I'm happy to give you a big picture on this. Sure. I've had lots of people raise questions about the sustainability of snowmaking. And my response is a couple pieces. Using gray water is even better as they are in this case. But 80 to 90% of the water that you put up on a hill or a slope for the winter comes back into the same watershed in spring.

So you're borrowing it usually at a time a year when farmers don't need it and other people. So that's great. Snowmaking itself is done by electricity. So if you have a green grid in Quebec, our province of Quebec, it's all hydro. So it's essentially net zero carbon already. But other states can be doing the same as they green their grid. And the third point is some people have called snowmaking maladaptation because you have to use additional energy to create that snow. And that's true.

But again, it can be green energy. The other thing is if you don't make that snow and those people who are in the region or locally go to ski elsewhere. So they fly to the Rockies or they say, you know what, I'm not going to ski this year, I'm going to go on a flight to Hawaii. Every time you don't keep those tourists locally and regionally, the carbon footprint goes through the roof. So the more we can do to keep tourists locally, the better things in terms of a carbon footprint will be. And I think your question goes to a larger point. It goes to like the snowpack is like this hidden, this frozen reservoir, right? In California, and with it going away, it's going to bring.

some huge water issues in California that depend on that snowpack. Lake tile can only hold so much water. And so places that rely on it are going to have to adapt and figure out what to do. I want to bring on another guest who works to get professional winter sport athletes and businesses to address climate change issues. Mario Molina is the executive director of Protect Our Winters in Boulder, Colorado. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me on.

Really appreciate it. Now, you work with professional skiers and snowboarders and businesses like Patagonia that depend on the outdoors. What are their attitudes towards climate change? Well, our athletes, they're in a way the front lines of the experience of climate change and the impact. They're being affected in their expeditions year after year and seeing the recession of glaciers in the Himalayas, the recession of glaciers throughout Europe. And as well, you know, Caroline Gleike is one of our ambassadors. She, you know, just summited Everest this season.

And she had a much shorter window for the summit, for a summit attempt than than in previous years because of the fluctuation of the jet stream. So they're starting to see the impact. They happen seeing the impacts of climate change firsthand in the landscapes that they spend most of their life in. And for our industry partners, you know, Patagonia, Burton, you know, Tera Mountain Company, they're very aware that the long-term sustainability of their business model depends not only on, not only in winter, but really on climate stability over the next few decades. Ezra, you talked to Maddie Baumann, who won the first gold medal and half-pipe skiing. What were her thoughts on how climate change is affecting her sport?

Yeah, so Maddie Bowman lives in South Lake Tahoe and she's part of Protect Our Winters too. She's a spokesperson for them. And in 2014, she won and that was the first year half pipe skiing ever happened. And she feels like not too long later, her sport's going to disappear. She's already, she says, we have this great scene in the podcast of her winning the Olympics and then her saying like her family is dependent on snow, her whole livelihood. She's chasing snow around the world just to practice. So she feels like even though her sport is new, it's going to go away.

Or there's great potential that it could. I have an email from someone from Jennifer in Alaska who sort of points out both sides of a coin. She says she lives in a remote, she works at a remote lodge in the Alaska Wilderness. And while overall in this park we have seen a trend of more visitors, the park service is hoping to increase tourism by creating more infrastructure. The dichotomy between the need of preservation and the want of tourism, I hope tourism decreases. I've heard that in Tahoe as well. Some people I've spoke to us said, you know, like we already have 29 million people.

We don't need more. I spoke with a woman who's been there for 64 years, you know, since since she was a little girl. And she was like, you know, I can't go anywhere without feeling like I'm in a city, but it's that 6,200 feet in the middle of the Sierra Nevada. Ben, how do you feel about that? Well, we've seen that sort of dichotomy or that complaint about over tourism is a term that you'll hear a lot in Barcelona, Venice, the list goes on and on. And so a lot of communities that do have, what they see is too many tourists are struggling with how best to take advantage of and work sustainably with the visitor economy, but at the same time keep their local culture and don't make, as Ezra just said, the,

locals feel like they're strangers in their own town. Mario, how do you talk to companies that might be more concerned with their bottom line and climate change might not play into their business model? It's important for companies to realize that climate change is going to impact every single aspect of any business model, regardless of industry, in the relatively near term. And so whether it's, you know, supply, you know, whether it's supply change, whether it's material sourcing, whether it's water availability, or whether it's snowpack, and the predictability of the seasons that the companies depend on, it's going to impact

the bottom line one way or another. So for us, what we find is that education onto what are the business impacts is incredibly important. But the reality is that a lot of companies are realizing that it impacts the bottom line because customers are demanding it. And so, you know, our founder, Jeremy Jones, I think, has put it best. And he said, you know, the hero in the outdoor industry is no longer the one that drops the thickest line or hawks the biggest cliff. There's the one that's able to do that. And at the same time, stands for something and stands for a set of values that the community

endorses. And the outdoor sports community is definitely awakening to the... the importance of making climate change a priority and expect that same type of leadership and modeling from the businesses that it supports. Amara Flato, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking about climate change. Something I have noticed, and I just want to ask you, and I'll ask this of Daniel Scott, you seem to be seeing a split in age groups here about their views on the environment.

I don't know very many young people who are in. not you know way fully behind doing something. Did you find that too? Yeah I mean I've I've been teaching climate change at the university level for almost 20 years now and and absolutely the the kids that are coming out of high school and into the university programs they realize they're gonna face the brunt of most of these change you know we're seeing the front end of a wave here in terms and already obviously it gets people's attention it gets business and government leaders attention but we're only

at the start of this. So they're the ones that throughout their career and into their lifetime, they're both going to face the brunt of these changes, but also they're going to be the professionals that deal with all the different impacts. They're going to have to come up with the adaptation solutions, and they're going to have to transition into a decarbonized economy all within the span of sort of one generation or, you know, the genies out of the bottle and the game's essentially lost. So they're facing this huge transition to make it happen. So they're, I think, much more aware of it. it than maybe some other generations. Ezri, do you agree with that in your reporting?

Yeah, I'd say so. Later on in the podcast, we're going to talk in our last episode, it's going to sort of be about the politics of climate change. And we have this group of students that are very politically active. They're all high schoolers. They're at Truckee High School, and they're a ski group. And they realize that their livelihood, their family's livelihood, their reality is going to change in town.

And so they're trying to get their elected leaders to act accordingly indifferent around the topic of climate change. And I'm in my 30s and I would say we, as a young person myself, we feel that same way. Like climate change is happening and we're doing podcasts or doing things like this to get the message out. Do you believe that your future, you and younger people believe that, you know, you're really playing with my future years here? In some sense, yes.

I mean, a lot of these things are projections, right? We have these scenarios and if the world gets its act under control in many ways, maybe our future will be different. But I'm a Californian also. You know, I grew up in the Central Valley where there's bad air quality, where there's wildfires, where there's threats of earthquakes, there's all these things. And so we live in a state and a place that's constantly affected by the climate and the environment. And so I don't know if I'm going to remove my reporter hat and just be a Californian as a person, I'd say my future might look dire if you want to stay in a place like California where everything is dependent on the climate, everything from crops

to your parents' income, to the snow, to where you live. Well, you might say that about, you know, Florida too. Considering the kinds of weather lashing it takes every hurricane season now. Yeah, all these places are experiencing one end of the extreme or the other. if you're in Florida or you're dealing with hurricanes in California, dependent where you're at, your house might be affected by sea level rise in San Diego or along the coast, or where it might be a wildfire in Santa Barbara or in Redding. All right. We've run out of time. I would like to thank my guests who sat out this hour with me very nicely.

Mario Molina is Executive Director of Protect Our Winters in Boulder, Colorado. Daniel Scott, Executive Director of the Interdisciplinary Center on Climate Change, and a professor geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Ezra, David Romero, is the host of Tahoe Land Podcast and an environmental reporter for Capital Public Radio in Sacramento. And you can listen to all the episodes of Taholand podcast at Capradio.org slash Taholand. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Have a great weekend. You too.

Quick program note next week on the show, we're talking about ways of knowing that may not initially look like what we call science, but first we want to know what does the word science mean to you anyhow. Tell us what you think on Science Friday Vox Pop app, a way for you to share your comments with us, and we might play them on the show. Download the Science Friday Vox Pop app wherever you get your apps and tell us how do you define science. We bid a sad farewell, fun farewell to producer Annie Minoff, who for the last six years has enlivened us with her sense of humor and professionalism. She will be missed. We had technical and engineering help today from Julie Friedino.

And many thanks to George Lombardi and all the nice folks at WSHU for hosting us this week. And, of course, we're active all week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And you can ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in Fairfield, Connecticut.