The Kids are Alright ... Get Out of Their Way
Fully Rigid, 8/19/23
Somewhere near 5-6 years ago, I’d guess, I wrote a piece for Dirt Rag about riding in Sequoia National Monument above Kernville. That article included a discussion on climate change and the sequoia trees. Forest Service rangers provided insights/quotes. A few years later, some of those magnificent big-tree groves burned hotter than seen previously in the Sierra.
Hurricane Hilary is on the way to San Diego. No stranger to hurricanes (I lived through Hurricane Mitch in Honduras), I’ve been telling people that water can sometimes be far more destructive than the heavy winds. Our local mountains and deserts are going to get inundated with water amounts, it seems, that such lands might have never seen, at least in recorded history, in such a short period of time.
A couple weeks back, young people won their case in Montana. Constitutional rights, dignity, and the “extreme” idea that future generations should be able to live in a healthy environment won for the day.
Mountain bikers need trails. Everything we love about what we do has to do with the natural world. Plain and simple. You can’t refute that.
What baffles me is that our community rarely talks about climate change.
How can we think about the future of mountain biking and trails and not discuss climate change?
How many of you reading this have had to alter your plans due to … wildfires, extreme heat, “not normal” rainfall events, etc?
Don’t believe in climate change?
Don’t believe in human-caused, at least in part, climate change?
I present to you the carbon cycle:
https://www.gao.gov/video/depiction-global-carbon-cycle-changes-over-time
If you take something out of the ground and then burn it, thereby releasing other “something(s),” it has to go somewhere, doesn’t it?
No future planning of any kind for mountain bikers, for trails, for MTB organizations and how they’ll spend money, should be permitted without serious discussion of climate change. To do so is irresponsible to future generations of mountain bikers.
The young people in Montana get it. My students do, too. Polling data tells us that most young people want change.
Two thoughts:
The kids are alright.
Get out of the way, if you can’t lend your hand.
Easy to deny it until it arrives at your door. I'm afraid by the time it becomes undeniable to policy makers, it will be too late to avoid terrible consequences. We're already seeing accelerated species extension. As much as I love mtbing, that's the least of our concerns.
Stay safe
To all your questions to the reader I can answer, “No”. Yes, plan and maintaining trials properly. But climate change has nothing to do with that.