Having always been interested in environmental issues and a member of green groups since the late 1970s, Patrick began noticing changes in the information he was receiving from ski resorts around the world in the late 1990s.
Resorts were becoming much more sensitive to environmental issues and they were also spending much more on snowmaking systems and much less on expanding their terrain than they had before.
By the early 2000s the media became more aware of the issues ski resorts had already picked up on and began running stories on climate change. In terms of ski resorts, people were advised to “check what resorts were doing on climate change” …but there was no easy way for people to actually do that.
Patrick established SaveOurSnow.com in 2004 and built the Green Ski Resort database which catalogued what the world’s top 250 ski areas were doing on this issue. The data was used by the Ski Club of Great Britain for their website which subsequently won awards and got global media attention when interest was at its peak around 2005/6 – before the economic crash.
Patrick carried out studies for Andorra, Austrian and Canadian tourism offices, as well as writing news and feature articles across media platforms and helping students and journalists with interest in this area gather information.
He also compiled a detailed study in to the CO2 emissions resulting from travel by different means to different resorts from England and Scotland believing that it’s the travel to resort that causes far greater CO2 emissions than your time in resort, where CO2 emissions are in fact often lower than in day to day life back home.
(Link: http://www.skiclub.co.uk/assets/files/documents/co2travel.pdf)
Patrick continues to expands SaveOurSnow.com with updated resort information; news stories and a newly added directory of green accommodation in ski resorts and directory of initiatives by resorts to fight climate change.
Whilst some reports in mainstream media have sought to blame the ski industry as a cause of climate change, Patrick believes it’s more a victim of what’s happening, is the industry fighting hardest against it and is an example of what’s to come, with far more serious issues than the loss of winter sports.