“I never wanted to start a climate organization”: Jeremy Jones on overcoming fear and mobilizing

Words I’ve never heard a scientist say: “The problem’s not as big as we thought it was.” Every week, there’s new science coming out. This week’s news is that the oceans are warming to record temperatures this summer. We are seeing what scientists have predicted, which is more extreme weather and the ripple effects on humanity. Right now, the science points to a much different planet than we currently live on.

I never wanted to start a climate organization—or any organization for that matter: I barely graduated high school. I’m someone who focused my whole life on snowboarding. As a backcountry snowboarder, my survival and my job, if you get right down to it, rely on winter. That fact requires me to have a really intimate relationship with winter and snowpack so I can know when the mountains are safe for me to do my thing and ride these serious lines in perfect conditions.

I was in Jackson Hole when it rained to the top of the mountain at the resort in January for the first time ever, in the ‘90s. The head of ski patrol looked at me and said, “That’s never happened.” These changes I was seeing coincided with what the scientists were saying about climate change and I couldn’t stop thinking, “Man, I don’t like where this is going.” At that point, I simply just wanted to donate money to a climate organization and be done with it. But there was a problem: There was no US organization in the outdoor space that was doing that. So my first act of environmentalism was writing a check to the Surfrider Foundation and becoming a member in the ‘90s.

The Surfrider Foundation made caring about a clean and safe ocean a cool thing to do. It created an unspoken culture that you needed to be a part of the Surfrider Foundation or you weren’t a responsible surfer. So I asked a friend at the Surfrider Foundation how to be a part of that culture. He called me out and said, “Your industry’s doing nothing in this space. You gotta start something.” I did not like that answer and sat on it. But he was right and, eventually, I overcame my fear and founded Protect Our Winters (POW) in 2007.

If I could get on a bullhorn and send a message to every person, it would be this: Don’t let the fear win.

The irony of overcoming the fear of stepping into the climate organization space is that I had to use the lessons that I learned in the mountains. With zero-mistake snowboarding, if I miss a call, the consequences are serious. I’ve been forced to develop a close relationship with my fear. But what blows me away is what I call societal fear. The intensity of societal fear is every bit, and sometimes more, than the actual life-and-death fear of doing serious snowboarding. So I learned that using the techniques that you use in those moments, where it can be paralyzing just to get out of your tent in the dark and march into serious mountains, works.

The key is breaking it down one step at a time. When I started POW, I went in and was like, “I’m just gonna plant this seed and do everything I can to find the best people I can to rally around and help nurture this seed that I planted.” That meant reaching out to climate scientists, other athletes, media outlets, filmmakers, companies—you name it—and opening the doors to let them in. I’m not an expert on any of this, but I understood that bringing people together and making something collective is how you get through the crux of creating and protecting something you care about.

With an issue this big, we need people. POW is all about rallying what we call the ‘outdoor state’.’ That’s anyone who interacts with the outdoors and feels a connection to it. We want to be an outlet for those people to come together for the climate and demand policy change. If we can collectively come together and say, “We want leaders who are serious about climate action,” we can incentivize climate action and foster the energy that the issue demands.

Not everything we’re doing is glamorous, but it’s what it takes to create change. We’re phone banking, canvassing, writing letters and calling our elected officials because some of their biggest donors are still the fossil fuel industry. We’re working on Capitol Hill to bring the POW bill—what we internally call the ‘Outdoor State Bill’—to Congress. It focuses on reaching our clean energy goals through the responsible development of transmission to deploy affordable energy across the country and ensure benefits to host communities at no additional cost to the federal government.

If I could get on a bullhorn and send a message to every person, it would be this: Don’t let the fear win. Mobilize. Find a climate activism group that you relate to. There are tons of different ones out there. For example, my daughter and a couple of her friends started the first-ever voter registration group at their high school. In the US, traditionally, under-29 voters don’t show up to vote as much as the over-60 voters—but it’s worth noting that early midterm reports show that youth voters have recently turned out in record numbers. So we have to continue to mobilize and make it clear that we want elected officials who are all in on climate policy and totally embracing this transition to clean energy. Don’t let the fear get the best of you. Just take it one step at a time. 

As told to Lauren Steele

The theme for Earth Day 2023 is ‘Invest in Our Planet.’ Find out more about how you can take action for Earth on the Earth Day website.

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