CMC announces new partnership:
the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization

Launched to address climate change in Colorado and region

By Vera Smith

A broad coalition of mainstream interests, including the Colorado Mountain Club, announced in June 2004 the formation of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO), to spread the word about what climate change can do to us here and what we can do about it.

“Colorado may be more vulnerable than anywhere else in the country to climate change,” said Stephen Saunders, RMCO’s founder and president. “For Coloradans, climate change means less snow, less water, more drought, and more wildfire. We think it is time to get serious about keeping this such a special place to live.”

In addition to the CMC, the initial RMOC partners are: Aspen Skiing Company, owner of four ski resorts; the City of Fort Collins, one of four cities in Colorado with a greenhouse-gas reduction program; Denver Water, which supplies water to nearly one-fourth of all Coloradans; The Nature Conservancy of Colorado, the state’s largest conservation organization; New Belgium Brewing Company, the state’s third largest brewery and the first in the nation to meet all of its electricity needs through wind energy; and Westcliffe Publishers, publisher of photography, nature and trail books, including John Fielder’s photography books.

RMCO also is unique because of the experience and savvy of its leaders, who have been elected to Congress and local office, directed federal and state agencies, and managed political campaigns in presidential, state, and congressional races.  The RMCO board of directors includes: Chips Barry, manager of Denver Water; Tom Gougeon, partner in the development firm Continuum Partners, LLC; Tom Long, Summit County commissioner and member of the board of directors of the Colorado River Water Conservation District; Laurie Mathews, former director of Colorado State Parks; Saunders, former deputy assistant Secretary of the Interior over the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service and staff director in three congressional offices, including that of  Congressman David Skaggs of Colorado; Claudine Schneider, former member of Congress and author of Congress’s first climate-change bill; John Stencel, president of Rocky Mountain Farmers Union; and  Rick Ridder, president of the political consulting firm Ridder/Braden, Inc., and the first manager of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.

RMCO’s science advisors are Dr. John Firor, former director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Dr. Dennis Ojima of Colorado State University, co-editor of a government assessment of climate change impacts in the Great Plains.

“We have so much at stake that we should be leading the country in showing how to reduce climate change and its impacts,” said Stencel.

Scientists say that climate change is already underway. In the West, temperatures have increased more than in the rest of the United States. Western snowpacks are smaller, with Colorado’s below average for fourteen of the last eighteen years, and melting earlier in the spring. As of yesterday, Colorado’s current snowpack level was only twelve percent of the historic average for June 7. 

A study published this year, using a conservative climate model, predicted that in just one generation the Colorado River basin could have three percent less precipitation, twenty-four percent less snowpack, fourteen percent less runoff, and thirty-six percent less water storage. Droughts are predicted to be more common, with the Rocky Mountains and nearby plains likely to have the country’s worst droughts. Wildfires could double, with more large fires. Other predicted effects of climate change include more beetle kills of trees and reductions or even elimination of alpine tundra, meadows, wildflowers, and some plant and animal species.

 "After the last three years, most Coloradans understand the effects of a prolonged drought," said Barry. "We need to understand whether a warming climate, apparently caused by global climate change, is accompanied by changes in precipitation timing and volume. By joining RMCO, Denver Water seeks to probe these climate dynamics, and understand the actions that are perhaps a partial explanation for climate change."

RMCO will seek to build a broad public awareness of the region’s vulnerability to climate change and bring about realistic public and private actions to reduce climate change and its impacts. RMCO will focus first on Colorado, and later the larger region.

For more information on the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization as well as a summary of likely impacts of climate change in Colorado, visit www.rockymountainclimate.org.

Smith is Conservation Director of the Colorado Mountain Club. More more up-to-date information about the CMC's conservation efforts, visit the CMC Conservation website.