Climate change and recreation: What you can do

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The one decision that makes the biggest difference

This article is part of a series of stories exploring the connection between climate change and recreation. Through conversations with scientists, advocates, land managers, recreationalists, and more, we’ll look at how a warming world and more extreme weather is impacting the activities we love. But more than glum news, we’re interested in how the recreation industry is already hard at work preparing for change, reducing the impacts, and actively trying to slow global warming. 

Over the last several months of research, interviews and writing about how different recreation-oriented groups are preparing, mitigating and adapting to climate change, there is one question I haven’t asked or answered. It may be the most important point. 

What can I do to ensure future generations have the same opportunities to recreate and play in B.C.’s wild places?

As someone who mostly pursues self-propelled recreation, it’s easy to trick myself into thinking I’m already doing my part. Not only do I recycle, compost, avoid wasting food and eat vegetarian on a regular basis, I also choose to earn my fun with calories instead of fossil fuels. I ski tour instead of snowmobile, pedal instead of shuttle, paddle instead of cranking a boat engine. I feel smug in my “green” choices, but I probably shouldn’t.

“It’s extremely simplistic and convenient to only start the analysis from the trailhead,” says Peter Sprague, the executive director of the BC Off-Road Motorcycle Association. “It starts from our doorstep and extends all the way back to the manufacturing supply chains.”

For example, he points to a downhill skier driving from Victoria to ski at Mount Washington Alpine Resort for the day. The typical vehicle will burn 50 litres of gasoline on the six-hour return trip. Meanwhile, Sprague could dirt bike for more than 30 hours on the same amount of fuel. One is judged more harshly, but both put the same amount of emissions in the air. The analogy works for climbers or fishermen travelling across the province or around the world to pursue their passion. 

Creating an arbitrary divide between motorized and non-motorized recreation does not help find common solutions to stubborn problems, argues Sprague. Like access. Making the approach to trailheads and recreation infrastructure shorter and greener will reduce emissions more than what people do when they get there. That could mean better public transport to recreation areas and, just as important, more access points closer to where people live. That’s especially needed for motorized sports like snowmobiling and dirt biking. Because of their inherent noise and speed they are often pushed far from the urban interface, increasing driving distances. 

The growing acceptance of electric mountain bikes and electric-powered adaptive bikes for mobility-challenged people could help shift attitudes towards motorized recreation, says Sprague. With different levels of power assist bikes, it is harder to say where mountain biking ends and dirt biking begins. It’s only going to get fuzzier.

“Electric recreation is about to blow up,” says Kevin Pennock is the project manager for Kootenay Outdoor Recreation Enterprise Initiative, an incubator for promoting outdoor gear-making in the Kootenay area. 

Several manufacturers have launched electric alternatives to gas-powered recreation, including Taiga Motors e-snowmobiles, Cake e-dirt bikes and MoonBikes’s electric snowbikes. Industry giants like Bombardier Recreation Products, the manufacturer of Ski-doo, Sea-doo and CanAm, plan to introduce electric products in all their categories in the next few years.

That’s good news for the climate. But, like with electric cars, the biggest barrier to wider adoption is charging. A jerry can of fuel is a failsafe that no electric technology can match. In the backcountry there is no e-alternative. Yet. 

Kimberley, Pennock’s home in southeast B.C., will soon be home to one of the few dedicated e-bike charging stations. There’s a need for similar infrastructure in key locations to enable the shift to electric snowmobiling and dirt biking, he says.

This might look like Portable Electric. Remote work sites, firefighters and movie crews use the Vancouver-based company’s electric generators to power camps and work projects with no carbon emissions. Red Bull Rampage, a high profile freeride mountain bike competition, used Portable Electric generators to power the 2022 competition. Pennock envisions a day when a motocross club has one at their riding area or a government-run recreation site instals one for charging e-sleds in winter and electric mountain bikes in the summer.

Investing in that kind of infrastructure, just like better public transit and more access points to recreation, is beyond the power or budget of most groups. It requires at least the support of forward-thinking governments, like Kimberley’s mayor and council, which approved the e-bike charging station. This hints at where our individual power lies.

“We like to encourage action from the top down,” says John Meisner, the content strategist for Protect Our Winters Canada, a climate change-focused advocacy organization aimed at the recreation community. “There is a role for grassroots personal efforts, but we think influencing government carbon targets is more important.”

The most powerful way to do that is at the ballot box, says Meisner. One of POW’s main efforts is producing tool kits, advice and election report cards to help its nearly 30,000 members decide where to place their X on voting days. 

There are many choices we can make when it comes to how we recreate and the impact it has on climate change. From the sports we pursue to the equipment we buy, from cleaning our gear before we travel, to how and where we build our trails, our actions make a difference. But after months of talking to experts I’ve come to realize no action has a greater influence on the climate’s health and the future of recreation than how I vote.

Ryan Stuart started writing about his adventures as a way to get paid to play. Twenty years later he’s still at it. Look for his name in magazines like Outside, Men’s Journal, Ski Canada, online at Hakai and The Narwhal. When he’s not typing at his home office in Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley, you can find him skiing, hiking, mountain biking, surfing, paddling or fishing somewhere nearby.