I’ve been working on a much longer piece dubbed the “The Scam of Protect Our Winters” for a few days now. However, I woke up to a movie trailer from pro skier Amie Engerbretson dubbed “The Hypocrite” which compelled me to write this post. Amie’s new film aims to explore the disconnect between a professional snow slider’s fossil fuel burning lifestyle and their advocacy efforts. A quick look through the film’s website gives a pretty good glimpse into what we can expect: A woman who is struggling with the fact she is a hypocrite around her climate advocacy does a bunch of mental gymnastics to suggest “imperfect advocacy” is okay.
I’ll save my deep dive into Protect Our Winters for another time, however I want to point out how insane it is this film exists. Amie is trying to find a way to move personal accountability to the side and suggest the problem is one of policy (or “the system”) so she can go on her imperfect climate destroying ways while doing some shameless self promotion at the same time. #gnarcissm
I’d argue the problem is not rooted in policy or “the system” alone. The problem has to do with technology, quality of life and broadly speaking “demand”. Protect Our Winters and athletes such as Amie are not helping solve this problem and her flavor of self important advocacy is becoming more and more nauseating. Lets be clear, from its inception until now, POW has done more to greenwash the image of their athletes and the image of brands that affiliate themselves with POW than it has actually impact anything to do with climate. Protect Our Winters raises extensive amounts of capital and has had next to no impact on the underlying mission of “Protecting Winter” because it turns out preventing climate change is incredibly challenging. The best thing POW could do is cease existing and find an entity full of truly brilliant people to encourage people to donate to. I’m fairly certain POW’s echo chamber of white liberal advocacy perhaps won’t move the needle here.
Now, I haven’t seen the film but what Amie and others miss is the following…
- There is no substitute for hydrocarbons for snowmobiles. This isn’t a conspiracy, its simple math. An electric snowmobile that is equally as capable as your current mountain machine would weigh around 1,800 pounds. Battery technology does not follow Moore’s Law and this side of us placing small nuclear reactors under the hood, there is no carbon neutral way to do this sport. I’ve written about this here.
- Helicopters and airplanes follow similar math. You will not see flights of any distance being accomplished with electricity anytime soon. We would need a battery breakthrough that is akin to the Manhattan Project’s impact on nuclear to get anywhere close to a solution here.
- Athletes are paid off consumerism. With a few exceptions, most of the athletes POW works with are marketing tools used by huge brands to output massive amounts of soft/hard goods we hardly need. How can you stand up for this kind of unneeded consumer driven waste if you are also advocating for climate? There is no world where rampant buying of shit you don’t need (often using petrol derivatives) and fixing climate change goes hand in hand.
- Quality of life and high energy dense forms of energy are very correlated. We all seem to forget this. While I’m a huge fan of solar (I use it), EVs (I drive a Tesla), and broadly speaking “technology”, our access to energy is quiet literally the thing that allows us all to be so damn comfortable and happy in the year 2024.
Don’t misread Amie, I am not a climate denier nor someone who thinks climate change isn’t important. However, your attempt at catharsis via the silver screen is nauseating. Go see a therapist about your internal conflict, don’t try and gaslight us into thinking your flavor of do-gooding is something we need to all get behind. Personal accountability matters. Being honest matters. Being willing to have conversations with people (even like me) can even matter. I’m not here to beat anyone up, I just want us all to level set in reality first, and recognize that this is so (so) hard. Waving the flag of “environmentalism” while doing nothing real for the environment makes us all cringe and frankly drives a wedge between many different recreation groups. The hoodwink is over, people woke up…this is where the “hate” is actually coming from.
I know, I know, “maybe you should see the film first”. Fair point but I see no world in which common sense can be applied here. You are in fact a hypocrite, so at least we have the title right…