Washington, DC – The Protect Our Winters coalition of skiers and snowboarders, including two-time Olympic snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler and the group’s founder, pro snowboarder Jeremy Jones, joined the Aspen Skiing Company, The Wilderness Society and other environmental groups this week to call on the U.S. Congress and the Obama Administration to help curb carbon emissions that are blamed for causing climate change that could have a detrimental effect on the winter sports industry in the United States.

“Climate change will cost billions in economic damage to America.  The costs of not acting could be devastating to a state like Colorado where  the outdoor recreation industry adds $10 billion to the state economy every year and supports 107,000 jobs, many of them connected to skiing and snowboarding ,” said David Moulton, Director of Climate Policy for The Wilderness Society. “By bringing their message to Capitol Hill, Gretchen (Bleiler), Jeremy (Jones), and Chris (Davenport) are making sure that Congress knows that climate change is endangering one America’s favorite pastimes.”

Moulton said that rising temperatures and unpredictable winter weather could alter the face of skiing and snowboarding forever.  “We don’t want to reach the point they have reached in Europe where desperate attempts are made in the summer to place plastic over glaciers so they are still around to ski on in the winter.”

On Wednesday evening participants engaged in a panel discussion in the Capitol Visitors Center’s Orientation Theater South, co-hosted by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), and U.S. Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Michael Bennet (D-CO). One of the group’s targets is H.R. 910, which would amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency “from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change, and for other purposes.” The bill is scheduled for debate on the Senate floor this fall.

Many climate scientists have identified carbon pollution as the primary culprit. A smaller but increasingly vocal minority disagree.

“We cannot keep letting polluters dump their carbon pollution into the air, leaving American citizens – snowboarders, skiers, and everyone else – to pay the consequences,” said Moulton.  “We must put a lid on greenhouse gas pollution, to protect our communities and our winters.”

The athletes and environmentalists on Thursday lobbied eight U.S. Senators from both sides on the aisle to pass legislation curbing carbon emissions, before holding a press conference later in the day.

The Aspen Skiing Company was represented at the event by its VP of sustainability, Auden Schendler. “The real climate threat to the ski industry is most likely to come in rather unexpected shapes and sizes: either, in the current case, through the massive infrastructure damage caused by superstorms, floods, fires and droughts or from the economic impact of climate change on people’s lives, which will prevent them, and their communities, from even thinking about skiing,”  Schendler wrote this week on the liberal blog Think Progress, referencing the damage caused to Northeastern ski resorts by flooding from Tropical Storm Irene.

“The upshot of all this is the following point: If we ski resort operators care about environment and sustainability, the ski industry’s number one priority should not be operational greening, but to mobilize its substantial and high profile political and lobbying power, as well as its celebrity and huge reach, to create political action on climate change,” added Schendler, who also serves on Protect Our Winters’ Board of Directors.