Hockey Fans Take Action to Save their Game from Climate Change

Hockey fans concerned about the future of outdoor hockey across Canada took to the ice last week to play a game of hockey meant to raise attention about global climate change.

The games were organized by the 'Save Hockey, Stop Climate Change' campaign in many cities across Canada. The event was also held cities in the U.S., Sweden, and Austria.

"The 'Save Hockey, Stop Climate Change Campaign'…is bringing about awareness to the fact that climate change is affecting all sorts of different things, to our food source, to our water source, to our outdoor hockey sports," says Leah Henderson, one of the event's organizers.

The campaign started during the 2005 UN Conference on Climate Change in Montreal last November, where young people started a very slushy game of hockey outside the conference to raise awareness about the threat global warming poses to winter sports.

According to the organizers of the games, climate change is the biggest threat to hockey since the NHL labour talks.

Henderson remembers the time when she was a kid and could play hockey outdoors, but says it is getting more and more difficult to play outside due to shorter, warmer winters.

"On the anniversary of Kyoto [protocol], in celebration of the winter Olympics, and the fact that Canada is part of Kyoto, there were games across the country and provinces and territories, and people played a game of hockey," says Henderson.

The symbolic hockey games were one of the many activities worldwide to commemorate the first anniversary of Kyoto protocol. In Turin, environmental activists were hopeful that the first anniversary of the Kyoto treaty be honoured by turning down the gas-hungry Olympic flame, but their request was rejected by the organizers who said the flame might go out completely if was turned down.

The Olympic organizers in Turin have however been praised by some environmentalists for their bid to offset the additional carbon dioxide emissions brought about by the games by investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy schemes.

The End is Near?

The impact of global warming on winter sports has long been a topic of discussion by environmentalists and sports enthusiasts alike. The U.S.-based World Resources Institute has warned that global warming is threatening the future of Winter Olympic Games in this century, because it is resulting in "less snow, and shorter and warmer winters."

A study presented by University of Zurich researchers at the 2003 World Conference on Sport and the Environment in the city playing host to this year's Winter Games, Turin, reported that the levels of snow falling in lower-lying mountain areas will become increasingly unpredictable and unreliable over the coming decades.

"Climate change will have the effect of pushing more and more winter sports, higher and higher up mountains, concentrating impacts in ever decreasing, high altitude, areas," said one of the writers of the report.

The study also reported that the ski resorts in North America will not be exempt from the effects of global warming.

According to the study, in the Lakelands areas of Canada, the current ski season could decline by between 7 and 32 percent by 2050 as a result of global warming barring the advent of new snow-making technology.

A report by the Rocky Mountain/Great Basin (RMGB) Regional Assessment Team for the U.S. Global Change Research Program says that "most analyses project a decline, if not total demise, of downhill skiing by the mid or latter part of the 21st century."

"One climatologist's model projects disappearance of snowpacks by approximately 2070 in the northern Rockies which would eliminate skiing in the RMGB," says the report.

Concerned with the treat of global warming to winter sports and the ski industry, the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) jointly created the 'Keep Winter Cool' campaign to raise visibility and public understanding of global warming and to promote ways to fix the problem.

"'Keep Winter Cool' was designed to help customers and guests of resorts and the resorts themselves be aware of the climate changes and environmental awareness," says Keri Hone, director of events and projects at the NSAA.

"It's to get the word out there to both customers and resorts to conserve energy and benefit the environment."

The high volume of energy consumption in operating lifts and snowmaking machines and other wastes associated with running ski resorts have made the ski resorts enjoyed by so many winter sport enthusiast one of the contributors to the global warming that threatens the existence of winter games.

Some ski resort companies such as the Aspen Skiing Company have started taking their own initiatives to protect the climate and to save the environment that their industry relies on by taking measures such as emphasizing energy conservation and using more efficient snowmaking equipment.

The First Legally Binding Agreement

The Kyoto Protocol, which after many years of negotiations came into effect in February 2005, is the first international legally binding agreement to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Most industrialized nations and some eastern European economies in transition agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 6-8 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

So far, Canada and many of the member nations are far from meeting their Kyoto targets. However, despite Canada's emissions actually having risen more than 20 percent from 1990 levels, the former Liberal Environment Minister and the president of the Conference of Parties (COP)—a UN body overseeing the Kyoto protocol—Stephane Dion, had insisted that Canada is not giving up on its Kyoto commitments.

Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced to the UN that the new Environment Minister Rona Ambrose will be holding the COP presidency.

Ambrose has refused to discuss the position of the conservative government on Kyoto accord so far, saying she needs to discuss the details with other members of the cabinet first, but has made clear that Canada will not be supporting trading emission credits.

The credit trading system is meant to help over-polluting countries meet their targets by buying credits from countries that have exceeded their targets.