With President Obama recently giving a strong speech on climate change and the immediate action needed to prevent global calamities due primarily to carbon emissions, it’s worth mentioning that professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones was recently named by President Obama as a ‘Champion of Change’ for his work as the founder of the advocacy group Protect Our Winters whose state on their website that, “Our mission is to engage and mobilize the winter sports community to lead the fight against climate change. Our focus is on educational initiatives, activism and the support of community-based projects.”
Jones is part of a group of 12 citizens, businesses and community leaders honored by The White House for their work with address climate change. The Protect Our Winters website goes on to list the facts about climate change.
-The last decade has been the hottest on record. Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before it, with each one setting a new and significant record for the highest global temperature. (NOAA)
– In the Lake Tahoe area, spring arrives two weeks earlier now than it did in 1961. (NASA)
– In the Northeast, by 2039, the average ski season will be less than 100 days and the probability of being open for Christmas will decline below 75%. (Burakowski, 2008)
– Snow-based recreation in the United States was estimated to contribute $67 billion annually to the US economy and support over 600,000 jobs. So when we look at the cost of inaction, it’s serious business.
– Even though the winter of 2011 was above average in the US in terms of snowfall, it was a below average winter temperature-wise throughout the northern hemisphere, the eighth below average winter in a row. The climate trend is one of warming. (NOAA, 2011)
Congrats to Jeremy Jones for the honor and for leading the fight against climate change, a very serious issue that needs to be addressed immediately.
[via BNQT]