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Stern believes that Deer Valley is among the best situated North American ski areas to resist job killing warming due to its north facing slopes, high altitude and the absence of the jagged rocks that require a much deeper base. Nevertheless, Deer Valley has invested tens of millions of dollars to achieve an impressive 73 percent snowmaking coverage. Other resorts lag with 30 percent or less. Stern explains that bankers will no longer loan money to ski areas unless they can demonstrate majority coverage by snow blowers. Stern says that if the industry is to survive, it will need to develop artificial all-weather polymer based snow material. For kids my age, the idea of skiing on Styrofoam is part of the grim dystopian future. Let’s face it, you adults are handing us a science fiction nightmare!
It may seem frivolous to fret about the demise of winter skiing when climate change is already melting the Arctic, drowning coastal cities and causing extreme weather cataclysms including historic droughts, fires, floods and hurricanes that take lives, destroy livelihoods, trigger wars and create millions of environmental refugees. But it’s important for all of us to recognize that even here, in the affluent heart of Utah—the stable center of the U.S., we can’t hide from Big Carbon’s climate chaos.
Park City’s initiatives are common sense, but our local politicians are working against immensely wealthy and powerful carbon tycoons who control the Congress and many state elected officials. Oil and coal industry robber barons invest in politicians who obligingly pass laws that give them vast subsidies, hurt renewable power like wind and solar and make it easy to build pipelines and fracking wells and hard to build solar plants. While their money subverts our democracy, their greed is deeding us an apocalyptical legacy of famine, floods and Styrofoam snow. Is it any wonder that many in my generation look at carbon and see not a legitimate business enterprise but a suicide pact for humanity and an assault on God’s creation?
Finn Kennedy is a 17-year-old competitive freestyle skier and grandson of Robert F. Kennedy. This article originally appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune.
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