Oscar/Hisham

Hello listeners and welcome to Fighting Failure, the podcast where we discuss solutions to the climate crisis. I’m your host for this episode - Hisham Kanaan

And I’m your co-host, Oscar Archibald

So today is going to take on a slightly different style than regular, because this episode is a very special episode, and is part 1 of a two part sequence of episodes. Today, Oscar and I are going to take you through the environmental implications of different nature or outdoor sports, and how to do them more sustainably.

Despite this being a sort of special episode, we decided to slot it into the urban expansion segment of season two, because as population rises, more people play sports. One of the newest classifications of sports is outdoor sports, which are currently very popular. “Outdoor” is in the name, so you’d really expect them to be environmentally friendly, however, there are some negative implications to certain outdoor sports. Luckily there are a lot of ways that we can fix them. That way we can still enjoy nature through sport, just in a more sustainable way.

Yep. And today, we’ll be focusing on winter sports. Specifically skiing and snowboarding, sledding and snowshoeing, some of the slightly more common winter sports.

To start, let’s talk about skiing, snowboarding and sledding - which are all generally downhill sports that involve the use of an device to aid in an increased speed of motion down the slope:

🚡 Problems with skiing

• 🏠 One of the biggest problems with skiing is the resorts (water use/electricity)
• ✈️ The travel to get there, often by plane from distant locations
• 🍰 The indulgence that surrounds travel and vacations
• 🌱 Damage to vegetation and soil underneath the slope
• 😾 Detriment to the surrounding animals...
  • In one case, ptarmigan - a type of bird from the grouse family - numbers declined over a couple decades in Scotland as a result of crashes with ski-lifts. Any burrowing animals on the slope would be threatened by the deforestation and constant compacting of snow and soil by the skis
• 🪓 Deforestation to create ski slopes, and soil erosion
• ❄️ Artificial snow-making
  • Astronomical water use and energy consumption

🌲 Solutions for skiing

• 💚 A lot of ski resorts, all over the world, are attempting to ‘go green’. This includes the building of nearby renewable energy sources that can aid in the powering of the resorts as opposed to the use of non-renewable fuel.
• ⛷️ Back-country skiing/snowboarding/sledding as opposed to the use of resort-based slopes.
  • Opposed by Oscar