POW POV: Surviving the Avalanche in DC
Photo by Donny O’Neill
As mountain athletes, we know how it feels to face conditions we don’t want and can’t control. When avalanche danger is high on our go-to northeast faces, we don’t sit around wishing it were different. We find a better line.
Right now, the most dangerous avalanche isn’t in the mountains—it’s in Washington, DC. The pace of destruction has been ferocious: declaring a fake energy emergency, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, freezing federal climate funding (80% of which benefits red states), and gutting mission-critical agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, with neither humanity nor a go-forward plan.
This is an intentional strategy called “flooding the zone,” designed to keep groups like POW reacting to the chaos instead of driving real, needed solutions. Climate people don’t like floods, and this is personal for us. Our POW Athlete and Science Alliances are being targeted because of their research or affiliation with cross-partisan, nonprofit, science-first organizations. We live and recreate on the public lands under attack, and our fellow outdoor community members have lost their livelihoods. We both have friends whose homes burned down in LA, along with our first POW office. Avalanches are scary and if we continue on this trajectory, it’s going to get even more deadly.
So what do we do now? We find another line. Our next big line is leaning into the power of our communities. This year, POW will launch our first community hubs to tackle both the climate crisis and the related crisis of real human connection. We’ll meet more at trailheads, crags, breweries, and finish lines, paced by the expertise of our Science Alliance. While we pedal and paddle, we’ll talk climate facts, protect public lands, and meet with city councils and utilities to get more wind and solar online. As athletes, we know the feeling and impact of taking small steps over and over again, together.
To learn more about this, join us at our upcoming Inside Tracks event hosted by POW Board member/famed Everest mountaineer Phil Henderson and Erin.
Historically, we’ve kept it pretty upbeat around here—must be the endorphins from all that fresh air. But even optimists get serious when the stakes are this high. In addition to creating community-level climate actions for the Outdoor State, we’ll share more “POW POVs” in the coming weeks to surface trusted sources of learning, conversations, and connection. We remain committed to working with any leader, red, blue, or purple, who wants to join us in our work to accelerate emissions reductions. Pragmatism over politics.
This was never going to be easy. What keeps us going is one simple truth: we’re on the right side of history. Real actions on climate bring new jobs, cleaner air, fewer disasters, and better future lines for the groms.
We’ll see you for the fresh turns,
Jeremy Jones, Founder POW (Tahoe community member)
Erin Sprague, CEO POW (Boulder community member)
