Craftsbury's "Green Racing" Project: Anyone Care to Defend?

[Jon]

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/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120402605.html)

[ge...@none.net]

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