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How to Go Green: Outdoor Sports
[by Warren Mclaren]
We love our wild, outdoor places. The problem is, we're loving them to death. Flying to visit the distant ones is contributing carbon dioxide to the ever-growing greenhouse gas overload; all the clobber we take with us demands greater extraction of diminishing resources both to manufacturer and to reach us in our homes; and when we arrive at our beloved open-air domains, our combined weight is directly impacting already fragile ecosystems. Take, for instance, the mountains.
"Like the earth's oceans and rainforests, mountains are crucial to life. Mountains are the source of freshwater for half of humanity. They are storehouses of genetic diversity that help feed the world. Yet, mountains are under threat from climate change, overexploitation and environmental degradation. Mountain people are among the world’s poorest and hungriest: a disproportionate number of the world’s 840 million chronically undernourished people live in mountain areas." Although covering only 3% of the earth’s surface, they contain an astonishing 10,000 species of plants, the highest biodiversity per unit area of any ecosystem in the world. They are also critically important to millions of people in the lowlands as sources of fresh water for drinking, agriculture, and hydropower.
So, in this guide we consider outdoor adventure sports such as surfing, sailing, kayaking, skiing, snowboarding, backpacking and camping to see how they might be made greener. (For the most part, we'll leave biking for a whole separate guide.)
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