MTB and Climate Change

Can We Talk About It?

Here’s what we know, meaning we have evidence that produces facts:

The oil and gas industry has had its own scientists conducting research in their labs.

Those scientists determined as far back as the 1970s that what we now call climate change was going to “come to be” with the continued burning of fossil fuels.

The oil and gas industry has had its public relations teams that craft campaigns and messages.

The oil and gas industry has created misinformation around climate change for decades.

In a quickly summarized form, what is clear is that the oil and gas industry knew climate change was going to happen, evidenced by its own research, and then embarked on the destination of having the public question if humans can cause climate change and question if it is real.

If climate change is not real, and if human activities are not the cause (at least in part) of climate change, why would the oil and gas industry spend millions of dollars to do the research and then millions more on getting us to think counter to what their science evidences?

Mountain bikers are a user group among recreation enthusiasts who need public lands in the USA.  As it relates to climate change, no land management agency is in denial of climate change. Every land management agency has programming to address climate change impacts on the land. At the least, it is an evolution of thought and practice, but denial at agency level is not the norm.

Other user groups that are not mountain bikers out there recreating on public lands acknowledge climate change. They work with their members and land managers in addressing and understanding how climate change will, and already does, impact what they love to do.

A few examples:

The Green Mountain Club is addressing/planning climate change impacts in Vermont, on one of its, and the USA's, premiere long-distance hiking trails:

https://www.greenmountainclub.org/climate-change-trail-management-strategies/

Protect Our Winters has a report/study, conducted in conjunction with students/researchers/athletes, that addresses climate change on multiple outdoor sports, e.g. skiing, climbing, mountain biking. Some quick bullet point understandings on climate change and its impacts on trails/trail planning are at this link:

https://protectourwinters.org/hot-trail-summer-the-impact-of-a-warming-climate-on-climbing-and-trail-sports/

The National Park Service is also addressing the issue:

https://www.nps.gov/orgs/rtca/climate-change-adaptation.htm

Why does the mountain biking community lack leadership on acknowledging and addressing climate change? Looking at websites of major mountain biking organizations turns up nearly nothing on climate change. There is little-to-no discussion of climate change and how it does and will impact mountain biking.

Bike Magazine tried to have that discussion years ago. I wrote about it in Dirt Rag, in relation to Sequoia National Monument and wildfires. Both of those magazines have been dead for a while, which means we’ve lost spaces to have that discussion.

The climate change discussion?

Why do we not talk about it?

If the oil and gas industry proved to themselves decades ago that humans can and will cause climate change, and then that same industry decided to spin the message, of which we now have the evidence of such based on their own internal documents, do we really have any reason to not acknowledge it?

If we acknowledge it but do nothing to address it, as mountain bikers using public lands, are we being irresponsible?

Are we being irresponsible to future generations of mountain bikers?

This is an open call to you, as individual mountain bikers, and/or anyone in a mountain biking community leadership position, to say something. It is also a call to mountain biking organizations to begin the conversation, at the very least, and hopefully develop programming around climate change and its impacts on what we love to do.

Silence is not acceptable.