The mission of Mountain Rider’s Alliance is to develop values-based, environmentally-friendly, rider-centric mountain playgrounds that encourage minimal carbon footprint business practices as well as alternative energy creation, while making a positive impact in the local community.
MRA is also giving everyone the chance to be a part of their ski area. By offering reasonably priced membership shares to the global ski community, virtually anyone can own a part of their own mountain playground.
It is MRA’s priority to develop sustainable mountain playgrounds that offer an epic riding experience, help the environment thrive and promote prosperity in our ski towns.
- In 2003, the world’s highest ski area, Chacaltaya ski area in Bolivia, closed permanently due to glacier disappearance
- In the past three years, 62 ski resorts in Europe have closed due to lack of snow.
- In 2009, an average six-day U.S. resort peak-season lift ticket cost was $408.
- In 100 years, the Glacier National Park in Montana has gone from 150 to 27 glaciers. It is expected that in another 20 years all glaciers in the park will have disappeared.
- In 2006, 47 ski resorts in the Alps did not open due to climate change.
- A ski season that is now four months long could shrink to less than three months in 20 years.
- Utah resorts are predicted to see 84% snow pack loss between 1976 and 2085.
- High greenhouse gas emissions are likely to end skiing in Aspen by 2100.
- Prior to 1990, it was unheard of to use snowmaking equipment in the Swiss Alps. Now more than 15% depend on the equipment.
- A majority of the Scottish ski industry has vanished (more than 50%).
- Alpine areas below 5,250 feet are now receiving 20% less snow.
- The world’s power demands are expected to rise 60% by 2030.With the worldwide total of active coal plants over 50,000 and rising, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that fossil fuels will account for 85% of the energy market by 2030.
- Jiminy Peak, a ski area that implemented a Zephyr Wind Turbine, expects to earn more than $200,000 a year by selling power through the National Grid.
- Jiminy Peak is now 17% ahead of their most successful year previous to the wind turbine installation.
- Jiminy Peak shaves about $450,000 a year off electrical bills with a single wind turbine.
- One megawatt of wind capacity is enough to supply 240 to 300 average American homes.
- For every 10,000 birds killed by man one is killed by a wind turbine.
- Global warming is expected to become stronger in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter months, making mountain-based winter tourism particularly vulnerable.
- Experts at the University of Zurich report that the levels of snow falling in lower lying mountain areas will become increasingly unpredictable and unreliable over the coming decades.
- In July 2006, Swiss researchers from the University of Zurich concluded that the Alps will lose 80 percent of their glaciers by the end of the century. That is with the average-temp-rise scenario of 3 degrees Celsius. The high end projections — a 5°C increase — will result in the loss of all Alpine glaciers.
- Eight out of the top ten counties in terms of increase in housing prices during the 1990s were ski resort communities.
- Many of the major mountain resort development companies such as East West Resort Development, The Yellowstone Club, Tamarack Resort, and Intrawest have either filed for bankruptcy or are in major financial trouble due to leveraging high cost real estate, negatively affecting the surrounding communities such as Lake Tahoe, Big Sky, Valley County, and Whistler.
- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."
— Indian Cree - "In 50 years all ski resorts below 4,000 feet won’t have a chance and will be out of business."
— Alpine conservation society, CIPRA - "Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction."
— Rupert Murdoch - "Action taken now to reduce significantly the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change."
— United States National Academy of Sciences - "Climate change holds the potential of inflicting severe damage on the ecosystems that support all life, from hazards to coral reefs due to warmer and more acidic ocean waters to threats to polar bears because of declines in the sea ice."
— PEWClimate.org - "Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents, and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world."
— Richard Branson - "The two most abundant forms of power on earth are solar and wind, and they’re getting cheaper and cheaper."
— Ed Begley, Jr - "We’ve embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil. Embrace the future and recognize the growing demand for a wide range of fuels or ignore reality and slowly, but surely, be left behind."
— Mike Bowlin, chairman and CEO of ARCO (now BP) - "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of … permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power."
— Jimmy Carter - "I urge individuals around the world to stand up, and ask local leaders, if they haven’t already, to pledge to purchase cleaner cars, build green facilities, and buy green power like wind or solar energy. Our actions may determine if we become a casualty in the war for a habitable planet for generations to come."
— Leonardo DiCaprio - "Climate change is not just another issue. It is the issue that, unchecked, will swamp all other issues. The only hope lies in all the countries of the world coming together around a common global project to rewire the world with clean energy."
— Ross Gelbspan - "An acre of windy prairie could produce between $4,000 and 10,000 worth of electricity per year — which is far more than the value of the land’s crop of corn or wheat."
— Denis Hayes - "Rely on renewable energy flows that are always there whether we use them or not, such as, sun, wind and vegetation: on energy income, not depletable energy capital."
— Amory Lovins - "First, there is the power of the wind, constantly exerted over the globe. Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it."
— Henry David Thoreau (1834) - "We are playing Russian roulette with features of the planet’s atmosphere that will profoundly impact generations to come. How long are we willing to gamble?"
— David Suzuki - "The ski industry is the lifeblood of my district and climate change is already taking a toll."
— Congressman Jared Polis, (D-CO) - "I love snow and winter and I want to protect the powder. We all need to do what we can to fight global warming. We owe it to ourselves and, of course, to nature."
— Ross Powers, Olympic Gold Medalist Snowboarder - "Ski-resort operators have a responsibility to reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions linked with global warming. I think they’re slowly waking up to the fact that global warming has serious local consequences, not only in environmental terms but also in cold hard cash.quot;
— Sergio Savoia, director of WWF’s European Alpine Program in Bellinzona, Switzerland. - "Global warming is going to have a huge impact on the Sierra. We think the ski industry should be leading the way in terms of reducing emissions and actively supporting legislative efforts to reduce emissions."
— Autumn Bernstein of Sierra Nevada Alliance - "2005 was the hottest year on record, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which takes the planet’s temperature with readings from 7,200 weather stations across the globe."
— Steve Running, a professor at the University of Montana and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). - "Our research suggests that since about 1980 the temperature increase from solar activity was steeper than ever. We estimate that 50 per cent of this is as a result of greenhouse gas emissions."
— Werner Schmultz, a professor at the World Radiation Centre, based in Davos, Switzerland - "Climate change in the form of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods and droughts, is the greatest challenge facing the world."
— Klaus Toepfer, United Nations Environment Programme, Executive Director - "We should at least still be doing things environmentally friendly, whether you believe in Global Warming or not. It still makes sense."
— Jeremy Jones, pro snowboarder and founder of Protect Our Winters - "Property values in the resort areas itself are so high, and they keep skyrocketing, eventually the professionals — the firefighters and the school teachers — have to go further and further from the resort area in order to find a place to live."
— Daniel Glick, former Newsweek correspondent and author of "Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery on Vail Mountain" - "I am disgusted with the way most resorts have been turning. The demographic is changing in the industry and to keep it sustainable we must change the way we operate."
— Josh Hewitt, Jackson Hole, Wyoming - "After seeing Telluride move from its humble beginnings to what it is today, then living in Boulder and San Fransisco, I am ready to see a new type of community, especially if it’s based around skiing."
— Matt Lanning, Silverton, Colorado - "I am tired of the conglomerate corporations stomping on the locals and only concerning themselves with greed and filling their pockets. What happened to skiing because we loved it not because we could afford it?"
— Joe Turner, Three Forks, Montana - "I am sick of paying for $89 lift tickets on the east coast to have all my money go to some huge corporation or rich individuals who are simply involved to make a bunch of money instead of those operated by the hands of who will live and breathe for the snow."
— Joe Risi, Burlington, Vermont
