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Craftsbury's "Green Racing" Project: Anyone Care to Defend?
I find myself really put off by the "Green Racing" thing and am
looking for someone to give me reasons to be less cynical. For those unfamiliar, Craftsbury gave grants to recent graduates to train full-time at Craftsbury. So far, so good. To be less "selfish," they're adding an environmental component, where each racer has an environmental project of some sort. Nothing wrong with that, so far as it goes. What I find annoying about the whole thing is the transparent self- interest, claims to "environmental leadership," and hypocrisy in the whole thing. Self-interest comes in using the program to publish a ton of articles extolling the program (and Craftsbury)--all of the ones I've seen also give prominent mention to the great new Concept II upper body ergs being used by the program (the owners of Concept II established a trust that bought Craftsbury). (For good measure, one of the grants also went to one of C II owners' daughters...) Hypocricy is best repesented by a quote from on the C II owners breezily dismissing the idea that people (i.e., their racers) should limit taking transcontinental flights for skiing and saying environmental action is more about your daily choices: what lighbulbs you use, car you drive, etc. Since one transcontinental flight has a gazillion times more effect on global warming than efficient lighting and other "daily choices," this smacks of self-serving ignorance. Which is all to say, it seems a strech to claim environmental "leadership," when the program is just promoting the trendiest, faddish ideas around (many of which have been shown to be actually bad for the environmental--e.g., "buying local"). In one of the articles, one of those involved ackowledging that while XC skiing is not a big contributor to global warming, they could serve as examples that would lead to political change. This, I suppose, it really what's so galling--it's really hard to see how privelaged kids, who spend all their time skiing and flying around to train and race, think they have the moral leadership to convince working class Vermonters, for example, that they should pay twice as much for gas in order to save the environment. I've always thought of XC skiing as having a down-to-earth culture of egalitarianism and, for lack of a better term, "straight-shooting." Ironically, green racing really seems to go against that... (For further reading, check out: "To really save the planet, stop going green" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...120402605.html) |
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Craftsbury's "Green Racing" Project: Anyone Care to Defend?
First off, cynicism has demoralization at its core. You sound critical.
Big difference. Yeah, this looks like another of the "green" type projects being done by elite and team cross country skiers that are posted at fasterskier.com. Safely apolitical. As a 1960s Berkeley grad, I remember well that the rise of environmentalist movement in the early 1970s was an explicit attempt by liberals to de-politicize and tame left-wing and collective activism toward the end of the Vietnam War. The skiers' efforts in total seem about as effective in changing anything as me taking out this week's recyclables, and have little to do with the social/economic/political conditions in which most people of the world live. When done in the context of sponsorships or corporate link ups, these efforts appear aimed at offering PR for big business (probably in some cases heavy duty polluters). This being a ski rather than political chat, I'll leave it at that. Gene On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:35:36 -0800 (PST) Jon wrote: I find myself really put off by the "Green Racing" thing and am looking for someone to give me reasons to be less cynical. For those unfamiliar, Craftsbury gave grants to recent graduates to train full-time at Craftsbury. So far, so good. To be less "selfish," they're adding an environmental component, where each racer has an environmental project of some sort. Nothing wrong with that, so far as it goes. What I find annoying about the whole thing is the transparent self- interest, claims to "environmental leadership," and hypocrisy in the whole thing. Self-interest comes in using the program to publish a ton of articles extolling the program (and Craftsbury)--all of the ones I've seen also give prominent mention to the great new Concept II upper body ergs being used by the program (the owners of Concept II established a trust that bought Craftsbury). (For good measure, one of the grants also went to one of C II owners' daughters...) Hypocricy is best repesented by a quote from on the C II owners breezily dismissing the idea that people (i.e., their racers) should limit taking transcontinental flights for skiing and saying environmental action is more about your daily choices: what lighbulbs you use, car you drive, etc. Since one transcontinental flight has a gazillion times more effect on global warming than efficient lighting and other "daily choices," this smacks of self-serving ignorance. Which is all to say, it seems a strech to claim environmental "leadership," when the program is just promoting the trendiest, faddish ideas around (many of which have been shown to be actually bad for the environmental--e.g., "buying local"). In one of the articles, one of those involved ackowledging that while XC skiing is not a big contributor to global warming, they could serve as examples that would lead to political change. This, I suppose, it really what's so galling--it's really hard to see how privelaged kids, who spend all their time skiing and flying around to train and race, think they have the moral leadership to convince working class Vermonters, for example, that they should pay twice as much for gas in order to save the environment. I've always thought of XC skiing as having a down-to-earth culture of egalitarianism and, for lack of a better term, "straight-shooting." Ironically, green racing really seems to go against that... (For further reading, check out: "To really save the planet, stop going green" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...120402605.html) |
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