Aspen, Colorado Leaves U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Over Climate Change Dispute
Aspen’s chamber of commerce isn’t the first to sever ties with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over political differences. The chamber in Homer, Alaska, made national headlines when it canceled its membership.
But Auden Schendler, the Aspen Skiing Co.’s vice president of sustainability, believes the famous Rocky Mountain hamlet’s stature may bring more scrutiny to the U.S. Chamber’s right-wing agenda.
At a retreat this week, the Aspen Chamber Resort Association’s board voted 11 to 1 to withdraw its membership from the national organization. Tension between Aspen’s chamber and the national one existed for years. The 680-member local chamber penned a letter to the national group in 2010 delineating its differences. But this year — which saw the driest winter in Aspen since the 1976-1977 season — politics are in overdrive thanks to the coming November general election. Several weeks ago, Aspen’s chamber began feeling pressure from Schendler and his Aspen Skiing Co. bosses, the mayor, a pair of county commissioners and residents who had had enough of the local chamber’s affiliation with the right-wing U.S. Chamber and its obstruction of solutions to climate change.
Private businesses such as Nike and Apple dropped their memberships a few years ago to protest the U.S. Chamber’s efforts to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from tracking the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases. For similar reasons, in 2009, San Francisco’s chamber of commerce — the 10th largest in the country — withdrew its membership from the U.S. Chamber’s federation partnership program but retained its membership with the U.S. Chamber. Since then, nearly 60 chambers have publicly denounced the U.S. Chamber’s politics or ended their membership.
Now that Aspen is all-in in its protest, it remains to be seen if other community chambers will do the same. At least one of the leading voices in the debate believes Aspen will make a difference.
DENVER -- Backcountry pro snowboarder Jeremy Jones says he's seen the effects of climate change up close after 18 years of heading to Alaska for deep winter powder.
"Our season ends a week earlier than it used to. The glacier we use to land on, we can't anymore," Jones said.
It's a big part of why Jones formed Protect Our Winters in 2007 to unite snowboarders and skiers to save what they love.
Coming off a shortened ski season with weak snowfall in much of Colorado, Utah and the Northeast, there's a sense of urgency to what Protect Our Winters wants to do next – get Congress to pay more attention to climate change.
Protect Our Winters wants to convert people's love of winter sports into political activism. The U.S. has an estimated 21 million snow sports enthusiasts who tend to have higher-than-average incomes, according to the snow gear manufacturers' trade group SnowSports Industries America.
The way pro skier and Protect Our Winters board member Chris Davenport sees it, skiers and snowboarders are a tribe of like-minded people vested in protecting the mountain snows that they spend vast amounts of money to play in.
