By Jim Stanford on March 10, 2007
View of Lake Akasha, outside the yoga center on East Hansen and Willow.
Lower the drawbridge!
Have you come across a moat or two while walking around town this weekend?
By all accounts, the melt-off is a month early. It’s not surprising anymore, given that aside from January’s deep freeze we’ve had a prolonged thaw every month this winter. And Woody’s forecast calls for nearly 50 degrees all week.
Mark April 14 on your calendar: Step It Up 2007, a National Day of Climate Action. Among the activities planned across America, a group of mountaineers will be climbing and skiing Gannett Peak in the Wind River Range, Wyoming’s highest peak.
The route will take the group up the Dinwoody Glacier, which has been shrinking rapidly. A short distance away as the raven flies, energy development is booming on the Pinedale Anticline. You do the math.
What a relief this week to see Sports Illustrated step it up with a cover story on climate change, by Alexander Wolff. One of the magazine’s best writers over the years, Wolff drives home the point to Joe Six Pack and NASCAR Nation that we’ll lose more than just sports unless we change the way we live, right now.
But rather than just berate the gas guzzlers with their heads in the sand, Wolff highlights the positive steps athletes, teams and leagues are taking.
Ten years. That’s two-and-a-half Olympiads — enough time for our teams and athletes to take the lead, galvanize attention and influence behavior. When they do, per usual, may we cheer and may we follow. But as we watch, let us remember that this game is different. We don’t have the luxury of looking on from the sidelines. We must become players too.
I’ll be posting updates on more local observances of Step It Up 2007 as they are planned. With any luck, Dick Cheney will be town.
Posted under climbing, conservation, dick cheney, environment, media, skiing, weather
