Money Flows Downhill: Political-Ecological and Ecofeminist Perspectives on Ski Resorts in the Rocky Mountains
Category: Oral Presentation
Author(s): Jonah Rupe
Presenter(s): Jonah Rupe
Abstract Though Colorado is renowned for the quality of its skiing, its many resorts have created innumerous problems for the state’s residents, wildlife, and ecosystems. Commercial ski resorts degrade their physical surroundings, exploit women and people of color, and worsen wealth inequality in their host communities. Ski hills represent the ultimate anthropocentric transformation, whereby thriving montane ecosystems and their aesthetic and ecological value are corrupted to provide entertainment and rake in profit for large corporations. Using data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, I found a strong spatial relationship between ski resorts and communities classified as Disproportionately Impacted (DI) by the Environmental Protection Agency, with over three-quarters of resorts being located within five miles of a DI community. I have chosen the Resort as my object of concern because it represents uneven development, hyperconsumerism, and environmental degradation, and because it has long loomed over Coloradans’ (particularly mountain-dwellers’) heads. I will be using political-ecological and ecofeminist approaches to investigate the ways in which people and the environment are exploited to maintain and reproduce ski resorts. It is my hope that the students, staff, and faculty of Colorado State University will begin to think more critically about the environmental and human cost of this mountain pastime.