Red, Green, and Blue

Skiers including Olympic gold medalists made an appeal at the UN climate talks in Poland to do more to slow global warming, keeping skiers in business.

Late last week, several Polish skiers and snowboarders slid down a ramp covered by snow trucked in by the WWF and handed a petition to Polish Environment Minister Macjiec Nowicki in Poznan. Looking beyond the carbon footprint of trucking-in a ton of snow, it’s great to see unusual players getting involved in these important global climate change talks.

>>More on the UN COP14 climate talks in Poland

“Ice and snow are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, and as avid skiers and snowboarders we see our beloved sports endangered,” about two dozen skiers said in the petition.

The skiers said climate change means milder winters and less snowfall from the Alps to the Andes, and from the Rockies to the Himalayas.

Signatories of the petition included U.S. Olympic and world Alpine ski champions Ted Ligety and Julia Mancuso, Swiss Olympic gold medal snowboarder Tanja Frieden and eighties-era Austrian ski jumping gold medalist Toni Innauer.

The petition to the 187-nation talks urged a new global climate treaty, due to be agreed by the end of 2009, to limit a rise in world temperatures to less than 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since the Industrial Revolution.

Image: Hamedog via flickr under a Creative Commons License

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