 Hi, I'm Isla, I'm a part of the Ellisburgam Bristol team, and when I'm not working I'm helping run the University of Bristol Snow Sports Society. I'm here to talk to Dom from Protect Our Winters, a charity that we at Ellisburgam have been working closely with for a while now. I'm very keen to understand from Dom what I can do to protect our sport and the environment. Let's go chat to Dom. Hi Dom, would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about Pow and Eurovision's emissions? Hi there, I'm Dom, I work for Protect Our Winters UK, so Protect Our Winters or Pow is a climate charity. We help passionate outdoor people take effective action on climate change, and it was first founded in the United States by legendary snowboarder Jeremy Jones. It's now lots of chapters worldwide following in the footsteps of that first chapter doing really well and helping progress climate action. So we do things like run campaigns, we're also delivering courses like carbon illiteracy training, which are delivered to the Ellisburgam stuff. So does a typical day involve talking to Jeremy Jones? Yeah, not the typical day, but he's definitely really involved still in the States in particular, and we have our own athletes and ambassadors in the United Kingdom, so yeah, I work with them to train them, and it's working with the athletes is a key part of how we can achieve our mission. Being a skier, I'm passionate about the environment that I love, but the two are odds because I'm not ready to hang up my boots, not just yet. Yeah, so this is what Protect Our Winters is all about, is people who are passionate about snow sports or climbing or whatever it is that gets you in the outdoors, and they don't have to be at odds, right? We have the opportunity to make this industry sustainable, and we also have the opportunity to use our voice to make the wider world a better place. So that's what we have to do now, and I'm passionate snowboarder and also a surfer, and yeah, being out in the outdoors is what's made me want to protect it. I have been skiing since I was in school, but then it was more recently, I did two ski seasons just after I finished university, and there I was seeing weirdly late seasons. I was lucky because I was in a high altitude resort, but the Dolomites were just little strips of snow. There was a snow gun that was pretty much it, so that was what was really opening my eyes to the issues in the mountains, and that's what makes me want to protect it, so harnessing that is what it's all about. The snow sports industry and mountain sports aren't perfect, but very little is in the way the world is set up. We have the opportunity to change that. So, is it too late for our winters? We've seen that the glaciers are melting, and in the past few weeks felt the temperature rise. Is it too late? It all feels a little out of our hands. Yeah, so definitely we're already feeling the effects of climate change and global heating. Certainly in the last few months, as we're filming this, there's been crazy heat waves across Europe, but yeah, this is also being felt in the mountains, and the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is sort of the leading scientific body on climate change, says that it's definitely already impacting the operation of the lower elevation ski resorts. Ski seasons are already about a month short, and they were 50 years ago in the Alps. At every degree, the temperature increases, it gives you sort of a best part of 150 metres snowline increase. So, we've already seen a couple of degrees average in the Alps, so it's already shifting hundreds of metres where the snowline is. These sorts of impacts, impacts local communities and economies massively, and that's why communities are keen to have snow cannons to provide backup. The snow is not as good, but also adds environmental impact because there's a lot of water use, a lot of energy use, and it's actually cited as a bad adaptation by some of the top scientific bodies because if the temperature gets too high, you won't be able to snow cannon it just won't work anymore. And yeah, it leads to some scary impacts. It's like this is safety in terms of avalanches, and particularly some of the summer rock climbing. There's routes you just can't do anymore because of these impacts. So, yeah, it's really causing issues in the mountains, but the more we do now, the less that that will be impacting the future, and that's already recognised by the top level scientific bodies that there is a chance still to protect what we do. Skiers, snowboarders and outdoor enthusiasts, what can we do to help? So, there are changes that you can make within the sports you mentioned and those interests. So, travel is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases. If you look at a mountain trip, it's probably at least two thirds or more travel if you fly. So, if you can get to the mountains, not by flying or by flying less far, so even just the Alps rather than Canada, you know, that's making a massive difference to the impact of your trip in terms of climate emissions. There's also the choice of resort and some resorts have moved to renewable electricity or have certifications like Floc on Veur in France, which is sustainability certification. So, you can start to choose these places and shop well when you're buying equipment and make it last. But yeah, there's also the case of like what can you do outside your trip and your everyday life or influencing the biggest systemic change. So, we also need to make sure that politicians are taking responsibility for this issue. So, just supporting campaigns from charities is really powerful and that's what's going to get us really to net zero at the end of the day, which is where we need to be. And how do you find these resorts that have the better, more eco-friendly side? Yeah, if you look on the resort pages, they'll often have a sustainability page that tells you all about it. You can look in France for the Floc on Veur, Green Snowflake, Lager. But yeah, particularly on the travel side of things, just some resorts are just easier to get to by train, for example. So, if you go to Lezac, you get a free transfer from the train station. So, the overall cost is not bad compared to flying at all. What is the bigger solution to global warming? Well, fundamentally, it's fossil fuels causing the problem and we need to leave those in the ground. Like we can add all the renewables we want, but if we don't stop using coal, oil, gas then it's not going to solve the problem. Yeah, so we've got to make sure this happens and commit to an end date on fossil fuels. How can people take action via Pau? Yeah, so you can learn a lot more about the problem of climate change, how it's affecting the outdoors and the wider world through our carbon illicitly training. And it also teaches you more importantly what we can do about it, how to take that effective action that will stop climate change. You can also support our campaigns. So, current campaigns include Save the Ski Train, trying to bring back that direct route from London to the Alps and Devest the Dirt, which is helping move money out of fossil fuels. And there's big campaigns coming in the future, so keep a look out for that. Sign up to Newsletter to find out more. You can also help companies take effective climate action with the Pau Pledge and you can also donate to Protector Winters to help us take more effective action ourselves. The pledge is something we at Ellis Programme signed up to and have started our journey towards Net Zero. How many other organisations do you have signed up? Yeah, so the Pau Pledge is really there to help organisations take that effective action to stop climate change, as you mentioned, by getting to Net Zero. And we've got well over 100 organisations working on the Pau Pledge and it really brings out eight of the key steps that everyone as a company can take on climate change. What are the eight steps of the pledge? So companies can increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change, move to 100% renewable electricity. There's also stopping using fossil fuels for heating. Then there's using zero emissions transports or electric vehicles. Then you've got to identify what some of your top causes of greenhouse gases and really focus on cutting them, committing to cutting them in the next few years. Then you're starting to look really big picture long term. Where do we need to be is Net Zero. So pledge six is about reaching Net Zero and that needs to be before 2040. Number seven is about helping the topic of green finance, talking to your natural service providers about taking money out of fossil fuels. And then the final one is influencing others. So partners you work with and your customers telling them about your journey and influencing the wider world positively on climate change. At Ellis Brigham we've been working with you guys at PAO for a while now and we've been donating 1% of our ski sales. How is that money being used? Yeah, this money is hugely important to protect the winter's UK and it really helps support us delivering our missions. So particularly underpinning our campaigns and attending events like going to COP26 and going into other areas of the community and being able to talk about these topics and deliver information that's really important to us. So what's next for PAO? We've got big campaigns coming up so definitely keep an eye out for those. We'll also be expanding our carbon literacy training further and adding new athletes and ambassadors to help us grow our reach. So yeah, big things to come. If you could go back 40 years what would you change? So 40 years ago there was already the opportunity to start taking action on this and if we had then we'd be having a much easier transition in dealing with this issue and because we've left it quite late we now have to take quite urgent action this is why we're talking about it as a climate crisis. So yeah, just making sure we got started earlier but to make sure that happened I think it would be potentially an issue of communicating the science clearly and particularly how we talk about it and the impacts of it. There was a lot of focus early on about sort of the Arctic and places that are a long way away for people so if we can talk more about the impacts on people, wildlife and more direct and near-term impacts I think that would be more effective so I'd probably change that. And now fast forward to 20 years what will the world be like? So hopefully we'll see a lot more electrification particularly heating and transportation. If we're lucky by then we might even be seeing some net zero short-haul flights but key to that is mass rollout of renewables and stopping use of fossil fuels so that we can power these newly electrified systems in a low carbon way. So where is your favourite place to snowboard and why? I think it's got to be VT in the French Alps. I love Whistler but it's a bit far away to go on the regular. And why is that? Well I did a season there so I just know it. I couldn't find the good snow. High altitude too so less likely to be bad snow. So Dom thank you so much for meeting up with me I've personally learned a lot. Do you have any forward thoughts for viewers? Protect Our Winters we're really dependent on people getting involved and supporting this issue and we all need to work together to beat climate change so please do come everyone and follow us on Instagram sign up to our newsletter you'll find out all the latest information what's going on on this topic and particularly things you can do about it so you'll find out about our campaigns our opportunities to learn more so yeah come support us and Protect Our Winters with us. Thank you.