With No Clear Movement, Mountain Biking’s Climate Crisis Stands to Worsen

While surfing, climbing, skiing, and snowboarding have all formed substantial movements around the environment (like Protect Our Winters), mountain biking has yet to. Not necessarily climate deniers (no one’s done that survey) our inaction isn’t so much an individual problem as a group one. That’s all very familiar to John Cook, a PhD in cognitive science who's a researcher for the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.

“I think that, generally, people fall into the misconception that climate change is distant,” he explains when I reach him by phone. “And distant in a number of different ways. Either geographically distant, or temporally distant—something that's going to happen in the future or in a different part of the world. Or socially distant in the sense that they think it’s going to happen to other people.”

President Obama has cited Cook's research on the inaction and denial problem, and he has won awards for his website, Skeptical Science. He says 58 percent of Americans are either concerned or alarmed at climate change, and only about 10 percent are dismissive. That leaves 32 percent unaccounted for, and best summed up as cautious or disengaged. The difficulty is that, even within the 58 percent of Americans who are alarmed, very few talk about it. Cook calls this pluralistic ignorance: when nobody recognizes shared concerns. Not communicating, in turn, feeds the disengaged. And while the fix is simple—just talking about it—starting that conversation often hard.

“You're not going to be concerned about an issue unless you feel like it affects you individually, or affects your community,” he says. “So, you need to address that concern, then you can be active.”

Cook is loath to comment on mountain bikers specifically, but he does figure the connection to climate impacts is much more abstract for summer sports than winter ones.

The biggest mental leap for riders, then, might be distinguishing the climate signal from the noise. After all, change has been a constant throughout our short history. Everything has always been in flux: our bikes, our trails and our lifestyles. We don’t have long-established norms to recognize we’ve deviated from. When we’re on a trail, we’re focused on an 18-inch-wide ribbon of dirt, not the increased efforts necessary to keep it open each year.

For Ashley Korenblat, the gap is not psychological, but cultural. She tells me there’s a historical rift between mountain biking and conservation she’s watched play out since the beginning. A mountain bike hall-of-famer, Korenblat, co-founder of Western Spirit Cycling tours and formerly the chair of IMBA, was instrumental in the development of riding in Moab, Utah. Now she’s a managing director at Public Lands Solutions, a nonprofit focused on recreational land planning and stakeholder coordination.

“Bottom line is that when recreation, bikes and enviros fight, the resource-extraction people laugh all the way to the bank,” she says.

At the moment, she’s helping fight an oil-and-gas development on the legendary Slickrock trail in Moab, and winning. She argues mountain bikers don’t put up a strong front against these kinds of threats most of the time because we’re solely obsessed with our access, and fail to see the bigger picture. The center of that conflict revolves around the U.S. Wilderness Act, which prohibits mountain biking in Wilderness areas (about 2 percent of the Lower 48 land mass).

In a lot of cases, it’s easier to fight the Wilderness designation than try to argue for it to allow bicycle riding (a number of heritage trails have been lost to Wilderness in recent years). It took years for mountain biking to prove it wasn’t a destructive force on the land base, but some groups, like the Sierra Club, remain cautious about us because of this ardent lobby against Wilderness. Korenblat says this ultimately positions a loud faction of us—that has the optics of representing us all—as anti-conservation. At least in the conservation movement’s eyes. She believes that’s not worth it.

“So now when climate change comes along,” she tells me, “the conservation communities are growing like crazy. Every corporation is trying to prove that they're greener than their competitors, right? And so, is it a good idea to be threatening the founding legislation of the modern environmental movement during the moment of climate change? That's nuts!”

Still, she says, the conservation movement would have us if we came to the table. It’s our own fault we’re not there.

“When you're working on trying to save the world, you need every voice you can get. There's nobody who doesn't want to welcome mountain bikers. … The problem is we've had our heads down. Mountain bikers have been really, really obsessed with the trails: building the trails, keeping the trails open, opening more trails. … We’re way off the back when it comes to climate.”

Wiens points out IMBA has worked on influencing clean air and water policy, and was one of the founding members of the Outdoor Alliance—a nonprofit with a mission to ‘protect the places we ski, hike, paddle, and bike.’ But that organization works mainly on issues surrounding direct land use, not the abstract threat of greenhouse gasses. Wiens agrees we need climate action, just not through IMBA.

“There are a lot of mountain bikers out there, and they’re people who are genuinely concerned with the health of the planet,” he says. “If someone had a platform and way for them to get involved [that would be great]. We just don’t have the resources to get directly involved in climate action. We’re really going to focus on what we can impact now, and we feel there are some threads that connect to that in a positive way.”

Korenblat is disappointed in this position. She thinks IMBA should be the sport’s lightning rod when it comes to climate, since that’s what the trails exist in.

“I’m working on them,” she says.

The same historical rift over land use doesn’t exist north of the border. Canada has one-tenth the population of the U.S., over even more area. The province of British Columbia, for example, is 98-percent public land—it’s why the sport’s thrived there. It’s likewise where one climate-focused organization has found inroads into the mountain bike community. Protect Our Winters (POW) was founded in 2007 by pro snowboarder Jeremy Jones. Its tact has been to assemble concerned sports figures as ambassadors, and then sign on their followers as political leverage. Recent B.C. POW ambassadors include pro rider Casey Brown and photographer Bruno Long.

And while POW Canada sprung off 13 years of foundation laid in the U.S., for the Canadian office’s executive director, Dave Erb, building a movement from the ground up in a new sport and a new country is still a challenge. Especially when trying to break new ground as an outsider.

“As far as the mountain bike community, I can tell you [climate change] is definitely on people's radar. When we've talked to brands, it’s definitely something that they're trying to figure out. It’s not this straight connection that we can leverage like in snow sports. … We’ve had lots of barrier-free growth and excitement, but then we’ve had a lot of kind of cautious sitting back, too.”

Some of that could also be summed up the way one POW ambassador put it to me in confidence: “Mountain biking’s still pretty redneck.”

“I think a part of it is we're just trying to come to terms with the hypocrisy of it,” Erb answers. “How can we be a part of climate action when we’re a big contributor?”

Indeed, mountain bikers often drive big trucks and gobble tons of carbon, traveling to ride their bikes instead of traveling on them. POW’s message here is progress not perfection.

And while there are a few fringe campaigns with a few hundred likes on Facebook creeping into this same space, other bigger movements are approaching too. In 2018, the U.N. launched its Sports For Climate Action framework in partnership with the International Olympic Committee, and it now has 111 signatories. The top bodies of almost every sport have agreed to ‘undertake systematic efforts to promote greater environmental responsibility; reduce overall climate impact; educate for climate action; promote sustainable and responsible consumption; and advocate for climate action through communication.’ As of March 2020, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the body that runs the Mountain Bike World Cup, was in talks to sign onto the agreement.

That may sound vague and ideological, but the collective weight of these movements, according to Erb, is still where we can make the biggest difference.

“When we actually look at the scale of carbon reductions we need, the only way that can be done is large-scale policy change from governments,” he says. “Everybody can reduce their carbon footprint, for sure, but that’s a small piece of a bigger puzzle.”

If that’s true, then not having its own climate movement is both mountain biking’s biggest failure and its biggest opportunity. Still, there’s lots each one of us can do on our own.

Consider that the transportation sector is the single biggest producer of greenhouse gasses (GHG) in the U.S., and traveling to ride your bike starts to feel like a climate crime. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says to meet current GHG targets by 2050, the global average emissions per person needs to drop from 5.4 tons annually to 3.2. The bad news for North Americans is our average is currently 16.1, and we have a lot more work to do.

There’s no coherent data on how much each North American mountain biker travels to ride their bike, so I used an online carbon calculator to figure out my own footprint. Recreationally, I take one big road trip and about one 3,000-mile return flight to ride my bike a year. Throughout the riding season (six months where I live), I drive about 48 miles to the trailhead a week in a small SUV. According to Carbonfootprint.com, my mountain bike travel represents 2.12 tons of greenhouse gasses annually: two-thirds of what my total budget for the year should be.

The Center for Climate And Energy Solutions (CCES) says I can reduce this by getting a more fuel-efficient vehicle. A car that gets 25 miles per gallon saves 1.7 tons of carbon annually over a car that gets 20 miles per gallon, for example. If I got an electric vehicle (which, sadly, I can’t afford), that would be even better. Some people claim EVs pollute just as much as gasoline vehicles due to a heavier manufacturing footprint, but that’s not true. The Union of Concerned Scientists found total product lifetime emissions, including manufacturing, for even the worst electric car scenarios (if, say, your electricity comes from coal) still beat the best combustion vehicles by a factor of two to one.

For riders, the elephant in the room then becomes e-bikes. Putting aside any philosophical debate, or extra tensions they create with conservationists, when it comes to the climate and whether these machines help, it comes down to this: It depends what behavior riding an e-bike replaces. If you’re riding one to the top of your downhill shuttle zone instead of driving an F-250, that’s good. If you’re riding one instead of a regular bike, that’s bad (the batteries have a big footprint, as could the electricity). Either way, one of the best things mountain bikers can do is simply ride to the trailhead instead of driving.

You can’t ride your bike to the Alps, though, so what do you do about that? Researchers at the University of Texas found that picking non-stop flights saves on average 220 pounds of carbon per person per flight—enough to power a fridge for a year. Route to route, there’s also an online tool built into Google’s ITA Matrix software that lets you see which flights are better on emissions.

But probably one of the best solutions is this credo: Go less and stay longer. That’s what professional ski mountaineer and eco warrior Greg Hill advocates, and it works. Instead of doing one road trip and one flight per year, if I alternate between each every other year, and stay twice as long (coupled with riding to the trailhead two more days per week), my annual footprint for mountain bike travel gets cut nearly in half without losing a single day of riding.

Pretty much all trail experts across North America agree climate change means armoring (or hardening) trails where it’s dry, and moving them where it’s wet. We have to avoid areas prone to deadfall and blowdown, and collect as much data as possible. Knowing where trees are likely to fall, creeks are likely to flood, and corners are likely to blow out, will inform the future of trail design. How to do that is a different matter.

Both the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service didn’t respond to requests for interviews for this story series (though a U.S. district forest ranger did speak with me specifically about the Angeles National Forest in Part Two). In Canada, however, Recreation Sites and Trails BC did answer. That’s the department within the province of B.C.’s ministry of forests that handles mountain biking on public land. A provincial jurisdiction, RSTBC has published a 14-page “Climate Plan.”

In it, they talk about adaptation to intense spring runoffs, drier summers, and declining forest health. Of the few tacit measures it lists, the top is to pursue better partnerships.

Dale Mikkelsen is the president of WORCA, the Whistler Off Road Cycling Association, and has been doing so for years already. He notes how, in recent years, his club has worked with the Cheakamus Community Forest to use bike trails as egress for wildfire fuel management.

“Through those fire-thinning efforts,” he says, “the Cheakamus Community Forest helped to fund the redevelopment and the creation of more sustainable trails in that area. And the reason they wanted to pay for that is they saw it as an opportunity, not only to integrate people into the forest and understand the fire-thinning process in a community-managed forest, but also to create another [line of fire control].”

WORCA’s not alone. In Southern California, the Angeles National Forest has partnered with the Mount Wilson Bicycling Association. In Colorado, the Crested Butte Conservation Corps—an offshoot of the local cycling club—has been helping clean up all recreational infrastructure, and even helped climate scientists collect tree core samples from avalanche debris. Countless organizations are sharing the burden of adaptation with other stakeholders on the land, and it’s working.

The best thing you can do as a consumer is buy a better quality bike. One you’ll be happier with and will last longer. Keep it in good shape, and repair it. When you can’t anymore, do everything you can to recycle as much of it as possible. Think ahead in this regard: Consider buying from a company that has a take-back program, and double-check that you haven’t already (sometimes these programs are scarcely advertised). If you’re on your own for recycling, there are hotlines in most jurisdictions to tell you where you can drop things off. Tires, fork oil, your cables, and even your frame are all recyclable. Remember that recycled aluminum, for example, has one-tenth the carbon footprint of the virgin stuff, and you’re doing well by the planet when you give any material second life.

On the front end, it is of course usually more expensive to buy greener products. Still, when you can find them, and afford it, do it. Vote with your dollars. A 2014 study Specialized Bicycles conducted with Duke University found some consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products. Yet six out of eight of the brands interviewed for this story series felt there wasn’t adequate demand for that yet. It’s on us to show them otherwise, it just takes some buy-in on the front end. As demand increases and supply catches up, prices come down.

You can also do your homework. Companies signed onto the Responsible Sports Initiative (RSI), for example, are on the right track. But some brands have equally stout in-house practises, and there are other nascent eco initiatives brands are using (like the HIGG Index). Ask at your bike shop, look online, do some digging.

Purchasing a used bike is likewise a good environmental choice, but a complicated one. It’s not carbon neutral, the product you’re buying still has a lifecycle it’s going through. But second-hand trade does reduce the need to manufacture new goods. While the used mountain bike market is ethereal, the PeopleForBikes foundation says 2.2 million new mountain bikes sold in the U.S. in 2019. If the used market turned out to be 25 percent of that, just as a guess, it would offset 165 million miles of driving just in the overseas-shipping footprint of new bikes (see Part Four for more).

By far the slipperiest slope of personal accountability is carbon credits. While these do help, they can also create what University of British Columbia professor of climatology Simon Donner calls perverse incentives: They can license bad behavior through forgiveness points.

“Donating to plant trees is probably one of the best things,” he says cautiously. “But, it’s hard to know if it’s additional or not [i.e., if the trees were going to be planted anyway]. The majority of [these off-setters] mean well, it's just hard to do the accounting. And then there are challenges if it’s somewhere in the developing world. What I try to do is think about how much money I’ve spent on carbon-burning activities. I measure it financially, and offset it that way.”

Last year, Donner gave money to an organization called Solar Schools Canada that works to put solar panels on schools on the East Coast. He says there’s no shortage of organizations doing good work for the planet, and they can all use our help. We can pick the ones we connect with best. In mountain biking, that could be POW, the Responsible Sports Initiative, Outdoor Alliance, or Public Land Solutions, to name a few.

But what’s most important, Donner insists, is we not give in to a sense of hopelessness. One of the biggest misconceptions is that if we don’t meet our global carbon target, we’re screwed. Like there’s a certain point after which there’s no point doing any more.

“Despite how it sometimes may sound,” he counters, “there's no scientifically identified level of warming beyond which chaos ensues, or life on Earth comes to an end. The real message of the science community is that the more that we reduce emissions, the less the planet will warm, and the less people will suffer.”

And, of course, the more we can ride our bikes. As far as common ground goes, maybe that’s all we need. Back in Hartmans Rock, it’s clear Dave Wiens and I ultimately want the same thing, we just see different obstacles. That means coming together is the most important work ahead now—and we need a good climate for that, too.