
Climate change poses an existential threat to the wild ecosystems that skiers and snow boarders, hikers, climbers, paddlers, trail runners, and mountain bike riders rely on for adventure. It also poses an equally grave threat to the businesses that rely on wild nature for their existence.
Tourist operators on the Great Barrier Reef are shifting their stance on climate change, with the peak industry body now opposing Adani's "mega coal mine", and acknowledging that fossil fuel use needs to be phased out.
In an unprecedented declaration, the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators (AMPTO) and Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) have called on "all our political leaders ... to fight for the future of our reef".
By definition, action to protect the Reef must include action to greatly limit greenhouse gas emissions. This is true of other natural landscapes.
In the USA, the outdoor industry and community is flexing its political muscle and campaigning to defend public lands that could lose their protection because of the Trump administration plan to hand them over to mining and fossil fuel companies. It is also calling on the USA to do its fair share of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Australian outdoor community can do the same.
Please sign the open letter to the prime minister.