Telluride Blues and Brews Festival sponsors a gondola cabin!

08 Jul Telluride Blues and Brews Festival sponsors a gondola cabin!

by Ben Williams

Thanks go to SBG Productions, Inc., for sponsoring a gondola cabin as part of the Green Gondola Campaign.  We’re one step closer to beginning installation of our first array: to be installed on the Station Mountain Village roof.

SBG Productions, who gives us the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival each year, joins the ranks of EcoSpaces Green Building Solutions, Colorado Buffalo Salt, 221 South Oak Street Bistro, Nevasca Realty, and BootDoctors: local businesses who care enough about our sustainable future to sponsor a cabin as part of the Green Gondola Campaign. 

Collectively, these donations will directly fund the installation of enough solar power to reduce the gondola’s emissions by 22.55 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e).  That’s no small impact – according to the Sightline Institute, an average family car emits 1.1 pounds of CO2 per mile.  Using this number, a reduction of 22.55 MtCO2e is equivalent to not driving 45,197.87 miles, or nearly 2 trips around the world’s equator!

Our goal is to begin installing our first array on the Station Mountain Village roof this coming off season.  Imagine a 25 KW array on the Station Mountain Village roof:  Nearly everyone who comes to Telluride will see it.  And they will take that visual home with them.

Many scientists believe we need to act now to avoid irreparable warming to the planet.  Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide today, the Earth’s mean annual temperature is still projected to rise for another century.  That’s an alarming fact. 

A rising mean annual Earth temperature delivers more water vapor into the atmosphere.  This means there is an overall increase in the latent heat energy that powers our weather system.  The end result isn’t a warmer planet in the way we might expect – hotter days and nights – but rather more erratic, unpredictable weather events as this latent heat drives wind patterns, cloud cover, tornados, hurricanes, flooding, drought and natural disasters engendered by extreme weather events.

Even acting now will not prevent an increase in the incidence of 100 and even 1000 year storm events.  As is arguably already evident, larger, more frequent tornados and hurricanes will increase in number and impact. 

A yet worse scenario is possible.  Many climate scientists rightly fear something known as “Runaway Climate Collapse”.  If the Earth warms enough, it is possible that melting permafrost in the arctic circle may suddenly release millions of tons of methane stored in decayed organic matter trapped in the ice.  Methane is a greenhouse gas with four times the warming capacity of carbon dioxide.  The fear is, if this happens, the amount of warming will cause a positive feedback loop that is irreversible and will ultimately make the planet uninhabitable. This nightmare scenario is avoidable with immediate wide scale greenhouse gas reductions.  The longer we dilly-dally, though, the more difficult and costly these reductions will prove to be.  

According to Dr. Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center we are already seeing melting in the arctic that exceeds even the worst case scenario predictions.  It's all happening faster than even the worst-case-scenario models projected.

Humanity’s complete affect of the global environment has led to some geologists' inventing a new era to add to the timeline of the Earth – the Anthropocene.  This new era will be characterized by our affected climate and by our geo-engineering attempts to mitigate it.

I believe we need to act together now to locally address the issues of Climate Change.  Most countries around the world agree that humans are causing these disruptions to the climate.  Only in the United States – where oil still reigns king – is there a never-ending argument over the veracity of the science.

Help Telluride meet the 2020 Climate Action Plan goal of 20% reduced emissions by the year 2020 and make a donation to the Green Gondola Campaign,  Be global, Telluride, but act local:  The future is now.