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- Hey everyone, welcome to Northwest Newsmakers.

I'm your host, Monica Guzman, and the world is not what it was.

Globally we just lived through the hottest July on record and here in the Northwest wildfire smoke has joined clouds and rain as a fixture of our forecasts.

Plus a heatwave struck once this summer, and then again.

Meanwhile, a major new report from the United Nations sounded another louder alarm that man-made climate change is happening, and it's affecting everything from our weather, to our waterways, from our health, to our recreation.

If you can't get enough of the incredible natural beauty all around us here in the Northwest, you'll be in good company with my guest today, Amy Snover.

What's gonna happen to our beloved mountains, lakes, and coasts?

How should we respond, and what does it mean now with so much changing all around us, to love the outdoors at all?

Amy knows the science and the lifestyle at the heart of these and many other questions.

I'll have lots of questions for Amy, and my guess is, so will you.

If you've got something you'd like her to address, type in your question in the Chat area on the right of the screen, anytime during our conversation Our engagement team will make sure it's in the running for our Q&A segment at the end of the show.

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With that, I'm thrilled to welcome Amy Snover to the show.

Amy is the Director of the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group, the University Director of the Interior Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, a professor in the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, and oh yes, an active outdoor adventurer herself, which I'm sure we will get to.

Amy is out to bridge the gap between science and decision-making, and today she'll help us understand what's ahead for how we can enjoy and continue to enjoy the natural riches of our region.

Amy Snover, welcome to Northwest Newsmakers.

- Thank you so much, Monica.

I'm excited to have this conversation with you.

- Yes, thank you so much for joining us.

We're going to talk about what's under threat around our outdoor lifestyle, what's changing about the activities and areas we enjoy, and what people are doing about it.

Where our viewers can get involved.

But let's start with what the outdoor says about us.

There's something about our connection to nature here that's a part of who we are.

Almost 500 parks in Seattle alone, the Olympic Mountains to the west, the cascades to the east, we gave the world REI, Eddie Bauer, and K2 Sports.

People from other parts of the country pack up their bags and come to get a dose of this incredible natural beauty that we enjoy all year long.

So Amy, what's your relationship to the outdoors here, and to what extent has it become a part of you?

- I love that question.

So I call myself a child of the outdoors for the Northwest.

I was lucky enough to move here when I was three with some parents who really liked being outdoors, and so I grew up backpacking and cross country skiing, at the time more than I wanted to, but now I'm grateful.

And when we weren't doing that in the mountains, we were off in the parks, Lincoln Park, Discovery Park, spending a lot of time outside.

So, I go outside when I need renewal, I go outside when I'm having trouble, and you know, if something's wrong, I need to get outside.

Or it's, I haven't been outside enough.

I would call, the woods and the mountains and the snow, my hallowed place and my place of restoration and renewal.

And like I said, when I can go to the wild, wild places, I go there, and when I can't go there, I go outside and walk around the neighborhood or the parks.

- You said when something's wrong, you know that it's a place of restoration.

I'm sure a lot of our viewers can relate to that.

So for decades now when we talk about Seattle, we do talk about its weather, right?

There's an old script about the constant rain, and the gray, and how summer starts after the 4th of July around these parts.

But of course, things are changing.

So, do you describe the seasons in Seattle differently than you did say 10 years ago, 15 years ago?

- I do, and for me, you know, since we're talking about outdoor activities, a lot of it relates to that.

I mean, I used to endure the winters in Seattle when it rains, because I knew it was snowing in the mountains, right?

And so that was okay to handle the rain because it meant there was snow in the mountains.

And unfortunately as it's warmer, it doesn't always mean it's snowing in the mountains.

It might mean that it's just raining up there too.

You know, we've seen our summer's getting hotter and drier across the region, we've seen a couple of big ones like the heatwave we'd have this year and 2015, if people remember that one.

Lots of years that are looking like climate change.

So for us in the Northwest, that means warmer winters.

If you live high enough where it would snow, it means less snow.

It means that spring comes earlier in the sense that the snow melts off earlier and things green up a little earlier.

It means that the rivers are flowing sooner in the spring, the rivers that depend on snowmelt coming out of the mountains, and then our summers are hotter and drier.

And now I think all of us are trying to get our heads around whether there's this fifth or other smoke season or fire season, that has long been a problem or a fact of life east of the mountains, it's much worse than it has been and then is now affecting folks on the west side in ways that they probably didn't expect.

- So as someone who pays a lot of attention to this, right?

and who shares the outdoor lifestyle, what have you seen yourself changing in terms of your habits and behaviors, and sort of rules that you have for yourself?

Like at this time of year I'm gonna do this, and you know, the trip is gonna go this way.

What kinds of things have you noticed yourself already changing as a response to what's happening with climate?

- Yeah, well, I think the biggest changes for me, like they're both in winter and summer.

So skiing is one of my very favorite things.

And for me, it's Nordic skiing, it used to be backcountry skiing.

And so, snow and winter and skiing to me are like, becoming ever more precious.

And you know, this precious thing that I don't know how long it's gonna last and I feel like I just need to get the most out of it.

So it's this extra kind of urgency, and then extra appreciation and like living and loving it while it's happening.

I think the other thing that is probably familiar to lots of people is about the summer and the smoke and the heat.

And you know, for us, for many people who go to the Northwest mountains, you know that June, there's still snow and it's hard to walk on the trails, and July might be nice but it's really buggy and often rains and August is the perfect month.

And so everything should happen in August, and early September.

And that's just, like that rule of thumb isn't working for me anymore.

We make trips for August and then, or plans for August, and they might be in places that are now on fire, or just the smoke or the heat might make it impossible to go outside and recreate.

And you know, I'm just, I'm talking about me 'cause you asked me about me, and for me it's about those like in the woods or in the mountains biking or something, but I'm seeing it happening also for people who like, you know, road bike riding, or outdoor sports in the parks, like when it's hot and when it's smoky, many folks aren't able to recreate anymore.

And so, it's disrupting the calculus.

If August was the best time when you were so happy you were a Northwesterner, and you'd never leave, now you just kind of wonder what to do with August.

- Yeah, yeah.

I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of that month in particular, for sure.

I see that with a lot of folks.

So, let dive into climate change a bit more.

The United Nations last week released a report prepared by hundreds of scientists citing a staggering 14,000 studies.

It called global climate change, a quote, code red for humanity.

It asserted that humans are unequivocally responsible and said that we're gonna cross a critical temperature threshold by 2030, earlier than we thought.

It's concerning stuff for anyone living in this world right now.

What is the big takeaway, do you think, in particular for outdoor enthusiasts in the Northwest?

- Well, there's a lot of, what's the big takeaway here?

The big takeaway is that, - Could be more than one takeaway.

- Well, the big takeaway is that we are on a path towards a future that I don't think any of us wants to live in.

I mean, we're here talking about things that people love to do outside, and we could talk about how all of them are gonna be harder and less pleasant, and maybe not possible because of climate change.

And then we could also have a whole other show on other ways that climate change is disrupting people's communities and health, and infrastructure and all these other things, right?

So climate change pulls on all the threads, and today we're talking about the ones related to outdoor rec.

And I would say, again, we're on a path towards a future that none of us would choose, and I don't think any of us are gonna like.

And we're walking pretty fast down that path, and we've known about it for a long time.

And so this report is showing us again, yes, we really are on this path, and yes, we really do have a choice.

We've already set some change in motion, so some of these impacts, we're gonna have to live with, and it's not too late to make the changes necessary to avert the really bad consequences.

So that's, you know, I say, we're looking at a future that's bad, but that future isn't actually written yet.

And that's what the report is both really hard to read, and also gives us still an escape hatch if we're willing to like help boost each other through it.

- So for outdoor enthusiasts then, let's take a track through the seasons through some of these activities.

We talked about you and your relationship with the outdoors, now we're gonna broaden it a bit more and see if we can capture even some of the rich activities that people undertake out here.

So hiking in Washington state, consistently ranked among the best in the country, and I bet a lot of our viewers are probably planning some hikes right now.

So let's start there.

What are the top two or three things you think that hikers and mountaineers, and even hunters, are going to see change, right?

We talked about the future is not written, but the projections are pretty solid, some of them, what are they gonna see change in the coming years, and what will it mean for the future of those activities?

So I think there there's two main things, sort of groups of ways, I think, that hiking is gonna be affected, and then lots of things, the consequences of that.

And so, and we've mentioned both of them already.

So one of them is fire, right?

We have already seen an increase in area burned across the Western North America, and part of that caused by climate change.

And all projections show that we'll have more bigger fires going forward.

So when I say the future isn't written, what I mean is we don't know how much, right?

Like we've set some in motion, and it could be really bad or less bad, and then we could walk out of it later, right?

So that's what I mean about the future not written.

So bigger wildfires, more frequent fire.

And so that means all kinds of things, right?

It might mean that the place you'd wanna go is closed because of fire risk.

And we've seen that, DNR closing their lands right now, Forest Service closing lots of lands because of actual fires, and because it's so dry that the fire risk is really high.

And so that's both for hiking and camping.

And so then after that, so there's the fire and there's the smoke, which is going in lots of places, not only just by the fire, and some people are quite sensitive to it and I think all of us should be very careful about it 'cause it's not healthy to breathe, and then there's the after the fire, right?

So I was backpacking in North Central Washington last summer through an area that had burned a couple years ago, and it's just mile on mile of like dead and down trees.

And so, there is a huge, a maintenance cost, a real challenge for the Forest Service or DNR who is ever managing the lands to keep the trails open, and so the reality is that you might be clambering over a lot of trees, which makes it not as much fun.

Another big one...

Sorry, do you wanna go ahead?

- Oh, sorry.

I just remember you mentioned mosquitoes.

I remember when I moved here from the Northeast, one of the ways that I bragged to everybody back over there is, "We don't have as many mosquitoes."

right?

And even that might be something that changes.

- You know, it might.

And actually, I'm not aware of any studies about changes in mountain mosquitoes, or you know, outdoor mosquitoes in the Northwest under climate change.

I was wondering about that as I was getting ready today, but I didn't have a chance to see if anything had been done, so I don't actually know about that, but another one then is through the changes in snowpack rate.

So, we have a lot of snowpack in our mountains and it's pretty clear, I think to everyone, that as it gets warmer, you'll have less of that.

So that has all kinds of different consequences.

It has some simple ones, like places that would have been closed because of snow might have earlier trail access, and they might have later access in the fall because it's not snowing.

Some places, campgrounds too, right?

Might be snow-free earlier, which then means they've gotta find people to staff them earlier, and which has been a challenge for some campgrounds recently.

But then there's all kinds of other things that kind of relate to that.

So with the decreased snowpack, when it precipitates in the winter we'll have more rain, and so you can have more erosion, you can have higher river flows, and this can pose challenges to like washing out trails, or bridges, or roads.

And so the North Cascades National Park and Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest, and Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, so that's the ones sort of on the east and west side of the Cascades did a vulnerability assessment for climate change, and they noted this as one of the major challenges, is that impacts on access and roads and bridges.

So, you know, we could go on more.

There's a lot related to that, but those are some of the main things that I think people have seen in some of the extreme years, and that we're definitely gonna see more of.

- So you mentioned yourself being into skiing, winter sports, and this idea of wanting to kind of enjoy it while it lasts.

What do we know about how much longer we might have snow?

I mean, how quickly might the snow go away?

What are we looking at here?

- Well, it's not gonna all go away instantly, and it's not even all gonna go away this century.

But I think one of the challenges that we have here in the Northwest is that our mountains aren't that tall.

And so if you think about where snow line is and then how high the mountains are, currently there's not a lot of extra space up there, so you can think about maybe if you ski and you go to Snoqualmie Pass, you already know that you get rain a bunch of days, right?

And so that means that on that day, the snowline was higher than you.

And so the warmer it gets, the higher up the snow line goes, and then the places where you used to see snow, you would more frequently see rain.

So, we've done some studies looking at the length of the snow season in the Cascades, it's sort of the 4 to 5,000 foot elevation span, so that's even higher than Snoqualmie, but kind of Stevens and higher up to Paradise, and it's looking like in this coming, in this century we're in, we'd expect the snow season to decrease almost by half.

So historically it was around 140 days, and later the century we'd see it, expect it to be 80 days.

So that's-- - How much time are we talking before we would see that level of reduction?

- It's later this century, so around the 2070s or 2080s, and then the interesting, I dunno interesting, we're not talking about a smooth trip from here to there, like we started 140 days and we just like go down to 80.

We're still gonna have natural climate variability, right?

We're still going to have years that have a lot more snow, and years that have a lot less snow.

So even as we're like, the average is going down, we're gonna have this like, oh, here's a high snow year, oh, a low snow year.

A high snow year, low snow year.

So even late in the century, we can have some high snow years, but the average is gonna be much less and then the low snow years are really not gonna be great.

So if you look across the snowpack in the state as a whole, we expect that the way the modelers usually do it is they say how much snow is there on April 1st, that's the end of the snow accumulation season historically.

And so the projections are for a sort of middle greenhouse gas emissions scenario, not a ton, but not doing a lot to cut them either.

We would see a loss of about 45% snowpack in the 2040s compared to what we saw at the end of last decade.

And then a loss of 65% by the 2080s.

So 2/3 of the snow pack gone.

And that means that the lower and more southernly places would be losing the snow, and it would be just remaining in those higher, colder places.

So that's not good news for people who ski, for people who snowmobile, for people who snow shoe.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some snow sports, sledding and tubing, you know?

Yeah.

- And I mean, as you've said, less snow in some ways means the precipitation is water, right?

So let's move to the water.

What will climate change and all of these changes mean for things like swimming and fishing?

What kinds of natural events are going to be affecting those experiences?

- Yeah, so I'm glad you said that, because when I say less snow, you're right.

I'm not saying less precipitation, right?

We still expect that to be about the same, maybe a little bit more, but it'll be raining instead of snowing in many places.

And so what that means is that we'll see much higher river flows in the fall and winter, and then much lower river flows in the late spring and summer.

And part of that, a big reason is many of our rivers that people recreate on, especially east of the mountains like the Yakima and others have a lot of snowmelt in them, right?

So that's when they're high flows is when the snow is melting.

And so there's going to be less snow to melt, right?

So that high flow will be lower, and the snow melt earlier.

And it might melt a month earlier, so it might have, you know, where you'd normally, if you were a whitewater raft going for the highest flows, they might be a month earlier in some rivers.

And then if you just keep going through the spring and summer, the challenge is that those rivers that need snowmelt to flow are gonna be much lower, less water in the rivers in the late summer and into the fall, and then much warmer.

And so, what does it mean for recreation?

It really depends on the place you are.

I mean, I would say there's gonna be challenges to that, right?

It depends.

Many reservoir, many lakes are really reservoirs that are managed for recreation as well as water supply and they're gonna have a harder time keeping up at a recreation level.

You see that in low snow years already, right?

Or low water years where there's the big dead zone at the side of the lake where the water is lower than normal.

And so, I think that's gonna be one of the major challenges.

Wow, so we were, it's striking me that we're talking about a generational time scale, right?

And without DOR activities often, you ski because your family took you skiing, right?

You kind of inherit some of these activities.

So also one of the starkest ways to look at big changes in our world over time is to ask kids what they make of it.

So our generation of locals didn't have to stay indoors for their health due to wildfire smoke the way we do, or cancel athletic practice because of crushing heat.

How do you see climate change affecting kids' relationship to the outdoors?

- You know, when you ask a question like that, one of the hardest things for me is sort of where you began, which is that we do this because we learned to do this from our family, right?

Or from our culture.

And I've asked myself a lot of questions about teaching my son to live to love skiing, right?

I mean, it's a big part of my life.

I could go on and on and tell lots of stories about skiing.

It involves meeting my husband and all kinds of things, and I have qualms about teaching a kid to really love something that's so imperiled.

And yet if you don't love things that are at risk, you won't care and you won't deal with the risk.

If it doesn't matter to you, why would it matter to you?

- If it doesn't matter to our kids, they might just let it go.

- Yeah.

So I think, you know, I think one of the challenges of all of this is that humans are really adaptable and people are like, "Well, I'm trying to go on vacation anyway "and it doesn't matter if there's smoke again."

You know, and kids especially if they didn't know a different past don't know that it's a problem in terms of being adaptable.

But I will say that kids, youth, are so aware of this issue and are, you know, one of the things that's most frustrating to me in the world I'm in is where people say, well, we just really need to get the youth activated and like help them, you know, get them motivated to deal with climate change.

I'm like, they're actually really motivated and super frustrated about the world that's being handed to them, and we are the ones who can make a difference right now, so I think that recognizing the responsibility that we have for passing on the things that we treasure, and recognizing the real grief and anxiety that many youth have right now because of climate change, I think is really important.

- So you're saying, you know, don't throw it on the youth, recognize that we're here, we have a lot of work to do, we might be busy.

I know that there's also, you know, folks who are younger too who are just like, "Man, look at what you did."

You know, there's sort of a little blaming going on of like, what kind of world are you giving us.

So man, I'm really glad you hit on some of those dilemmas and issues at the heart of this.

So, all right, well, let's turn then to what we can do.

What's growing and changing.

When we talk about change, really we're talking about a whole planet, and our minds can barely grasp even the size of this blue ball we're floating on and sitting on, it's floating through space, let alone all the forces constantly at work on it.

So I'm really curious, as a scientist who has to work in this every day and confront all the resistance and the politics, but also the science and how the heck we even do this, how do you reframe the challenge so it feels doable, so that we can take that framing on for ourselves as well?

- You know, one thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately is some of the environmental challenges that we faced in the past and really made progress on.

And I know they're nowhere near the scale of climate change, but they were things that people really didn't seem to care about and paths that seemed to be cemented.

So, I mean, think about Lake Washington, and this is before I really knew about it, or maybe before we lived here, but Lake Washington was so polluted you couldn't swim in it.

- When was it?

- This was in the seventies, and it's actually Metro, King County Metro was created to help clean up lake Washington.

It was so polluted you couldn't swim in it and people finally decided that that wasn't okay.

And you know, again it was before my time in terms of paying attention to an issue like that, and so I don't really know the story, but you know the story in the large sense, which is that some people profited from the pollution, a lot of people were harmed from the pollution, felt like they didn't have the power to make a difference and it was also their home and what they loved that was dirtied around them.

And so, and look, you were surprised.

You didn't know that.

Lake Washington is clean and beautiful.

I mean, it's got some little parts that are problematic in the summer, but you know, - I swim in it every week, yeah.

- Exactly.

So we can, you know, for some reason that particular story, because that's home, and that was bad, and that was fixed, sticks with me.

And so I just keep thinking about like, I would say we do not have a choice about getting involved and trying to fix this.

We do not have a choice, because we're on a path towards a future we don't want.

And it's a huge, impossible thing to figure out like what to do, because if this were an easy thing to solve, it would have been solved.

And it's super hard for any individual to know what to do and to feel like what they do matters.

And so I made myself feel better once a couple of years ago when I was like, I keep feeling like nothing I do matters.

And then I turned it around and I said, well, the only thing that matters is what you do.

- Ooh, wait, can you say that again?

That's really good.

- Yeah, so I was like, nothing I do matters.

Right?

Cause it's just so big.

My shoulder to the boulder, I'm too little.

Nothing I do matters.

And I turned it around and I said, the only thing that matters is what I do.

And so, change happens in mysterious ways, right?

Change happens through political change, through social change, through diffusion of innovations and ideas, and there's no one thing that's gonna do it, and so everyone needs to do what they can do.

Everyone needs to talk, act, write, sing, paint, hike, and talk to hikers.

Like everyone needs to do what they can do because who knows who's gonna be that one extra little push on the boulder to make it roll.

- So before we dig into what we can do, I wanna pause really quickly and remind our viewers to get your questions in.

I know you have them, I know you have a lot of them.

I saw the ones that you sent in before this conversation, and they were wonderful.

We'd love to hear what you'd like to ask Amy, so please do submit those questions.

So Amy, I wanna know then, what specifically is happening in and around the Northwest that you think is worth rooting for when it comes to climate, the outdoors, this whole relationship between people and planet.

Back in 2007 you wrote a tip sheet for governments to help them negotiate all of these things.

So let's start there.

Give us a report card.

How well do you think that agencies in King County and Washington State are doing, considering the challenges, and what do you want to see them double down on now?

- So there's two big categories of things we should talk about what's being done, right?

So when you think about climate change and addressing it, there's two things we have to do, two sides of the coin that are inseparable.

And one of them is we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we need to reduce them by 1/2 by 2030, and basically to zero by 2050 if we're gonna have a chance of staying under the targeted warming under the Paris Agreement.

And so there's a lot going on, but not enough going on to get us on that path.

And Washington State has new legislation to help us reduce emissions.

My work and my team at the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group is aimed at understanding the impacts that we've already set in motion, and then what we can do to prepare for them and prepare our lands, and our waters, and our communities for them.

So I have a much finer read on like how governments are doing for that.

And I would say that, and so what should they be doing, before how well they're doing, what should they be doing, right?

So what they should be doing is recognizing that we've already changed the climate, and so therefore things are going to change.

I told you what, those are, right?

Less snow, earlier snow melt, higher seas, - That's there no matter what.

- It's happening, some of it's happening, some of it's baking.

And so when you design a trail or a bridge, when you replace a culvert that fish go through, when you decide which habitat to protect or restore, when you replant after a forest fire, you need to do it recognizing that that thing you're building or conserving or restoring is gonna live in a new kind of climate.

So you need to design it to succeed in that climate.

So that's what we call preparation or adaptation to climate change.

And that means that the money you spend, which is my money, and your money too Monica, right?

That's our money, that it'll be spent wisely and it'll like actually do what it's meant to do.

And so I would say that this is a happy secret about climate change is that our local governments, meaning our many of our local communities, cities and counties, many of our state agencies and federal agencies, and many of the tribal nations and tribal entities here in our region are including that climate thinking in their work.

So, people don't talk about it a lot.

A lot of them have done it under the radar 'cause they know it's important, but people weren't that concerned about climate change so they didn't get a lot of brownie points for doing that.

So there's a lot of stuff going on from, I mean, name a state agency and I'll tell you probably a story about what they're doing to help make our lands and waters.

- I do wanna ask you on a example.

I wonder if you could give us an example of a specific thing that, here's how you would design it differently for the climate we are going to have.

- Sure, and I can give you one related to that access issue I told you about.

So many of the roads we drive to get to the forests have culverts under them, which are those pipes, right?

That when the water comes down the hillside and has to get to the river and there's a road in the way, it goes into a pipe, like the ditch and then the pipe, and that's called a culvert.

And those culverts were built to handle the flows of the past, which means they're too small.

Many of them are too small for the higher flows, the higher rain events of the future.

And so that means that the road will wash out.

And so, many of the agencies from Department of Transportation, to the Forest Service, to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are looking at culverts and saying, which ones are too small, which ones do we need to replace, and how big, let's put in the right size ones for the future.

And when we build a new road, let's put it in the right size one for the future.

So that's like, you know, the stuff nobody thinks about 'cause they drive on the road and like who knew there was a pipe under it.

- Yeah, totally.

- But it's all the difference for like, if the road is just there or they gotta replace it every year, and if you can get to the trail.

So that's one example, and then I'll quickly, I had an, oh, I'll quickly give another one, which is in many of the natural forests when they have restoration plans and they're thinking about restoring a forest that I don't know, needs to be thinned, or needs some restoration along the riparian zone 'cause it's not healthy for fish, in the old days, they would say, let's look backwards in time and try to make the forest look like what it should have looked like in the past.

And now you have to say, we need to look at what the forest should look like under a warmer climate.

- I see, right.

- So I need to make sure that-- - Yeah.

- I need to make sure that the trees can withstand the extra drought stress they're gonna have, so maybe they need to be fewer trees so they don't suck each other's water up.

Or after a fire when I plant seedlings, I need to plant the seedlings that can live here 'cause now it's hotter, instead of the seedlings that could have lived here before.

So those are the kinds of decisions I'm talking about.

- Gotcha, thanks for that.

So if you had a bajillion dollars and a world of support to throw at one overall effort or initiative that maybe isn't government-level, but more, you know, organizations, public efforts, what would it be?

In terms of like getting at climate change and the things that people can themselves get involved with.

- Oh man, you didn't warn me about this question.

(laughing) I think with climate change, we kinda know what we need to do but we're not doing enough of it.

And I think there's this other saying that people came up with, which is when it comes to climate change there's no silver bullet, there's only silver BBs, right?

So there's no one thing I would put everything in.

I would put my money all over the place.

I would put my money towards efforts to reduce emissions, change policies to reduce emissions and get clean tech and all those things.

And I would put my money towards really applying science to help make these decisions better.

So it's everything that needs to be done to make our communities resilient from forest thinning, to figuring out how to do setbacks on the coast, to restoring habitats so that salmon can still thrive.

I'm sorry, I don't have a sexy one thing, but I think the good news about that is if I had time to give you my enormously long laundry list, which has been written in other places, we can point your viewers to it, I think people could find themselves somewhere on that list.

Like there's, the bad news is there's so much to be done, but the good news is there's so much to be done that one of those things, you'll be good at and you can make a difference for.

- Right, so there's enough of a menu.

This is a big enough problem that there is a big menu and so gee, everyone should probably find something they can do.

That's what I'm hearing, right?

Well, one last thing that I wanna ask you before we move on to audience questions has to do, coming back full circle to that idea of the riches of the natural world around us and how we enjoy them, and how they're almost a part of our culture and a part of the us.

Is it possible these days, do you think, to love the outdoors without working to take care of it?

- It's not possible for me.

I think I like an answer that's for myself.

It's not possible for me because the outdoors, the things that I love about the outdoors and the benefits it brings me and other people I know are fragile and need to be protected, helped, restored, and are really threatened by some changes that are in motion.

And so if I love it without doing anything, then I won't have as much to love in the future.

- Thank you for that.

So now I want to make sure we do have time for our reader questions.

They sent in some wonderful ones, as I said.

So let's start with this question from Lauren Keever.

She writes, encouraging people to adventure outside is a gateway for more people to care about our environmental impact as you mentioned.

Can you touch on this topic balance, she asks, and she adds, how do we make our outdoor wonders easily accessible to everyone while protecting it simultaneously?

So I wonder if you can add a little more to the discussion about that balance.

- Yeah, that's a huge challenge, right?

I think there are parts of the outdoors in this region or in other places that people have seen that are in danger of being loved to death.

And so, I don't have an easy answer to that.

I think we need a, you know, a mix of places that are, I mean, we have a mix of places because we don't all live in the same place that are easier and harder to get to, and we need to make sure that there are programs, and I don't know what the other words are, that make outdoor recreation accessible to all.

I mean, I was super excited to see the king County buses, or the, you know, that you could take a bus to trailheads from the city.

And you know, that hadn't happened before, and you had to either have a car or know someone with a car, or have enough money to rent a car, or happen to live by one, and that just doesn't make sense.

So finding these ways because, so I think that's one thing, and I think that I have learned so much from folks who really help expand the opportunities for outdoor renewal and activity within our urban and suburban areas.

So I think if we think, I think as we think about making sure it's accessible to all and making sure that there's still space, we need to be thinking across that whole landscape.

- So here's another question from a viewer, do you foresee daily health advisories being made much like a weather report, to those planning outdoor activities?

If so, how do you foresee communicating those advisories?

- I feel like we're kind of there already in some sense that there, so yes, I see.

So in the smoke season, right?

There are many ways to get air quality updates in terms of like what the current status is from a variety of different networks, and then also from forecasts and you know, EPA, and Washington State Department of Ecology, and then other state departments in our neighboring states provide these air quality forecasts that come with guidance for what are sort of healthy or safe activities to do outside of those levels of air quality.

So I guess what I, maybe the question is, and I've been thinking about this too, is that those aren't always easy to find.

I mean, I've noticed that they're showing up on my weather app on my phone now, like there is an air quality information, and I don't remember that being there.

And I imagine that local governments or newspapers would start including that in their information, or TV meteorologists.

There's a lot of good science on how to communicate that that is about how to help connect the risk information to the activities that people are doing and so you can make your own choice about what's healthy and safe for you, and there's also really good science about, and common sense, I think, about using trusted messengers and making sure that that information gets to all communities through mechanisms and, you know, languages, and also just messengers that they trust or are even using.

- Yep.

So you had mentioned earlier a phrase I wanted to come back to, that some areas we may be loving to death.

So one viewer asks, many people are asking about how to enjoy the outdoors responsibly.

Any thoughts on making adventuring itself more sustainable?

How do we make sure we're taking care of the land and water that we enjoy?

- That's a good question too.

And I think it could be, I could answer, you could answer it in a whole bunch of levels, right?

Like one level is, what are you doing right then and what mark are you leaving?

And so that gets to whatever you're doing, leave no trace.

And I think that there's a lot of improvements that compete on many of our trails and many of our, where there are traces, you walk along and you can see that somebody has been there cause there's some trash or something.

And so, part of it is what mark are you leaping when you're there, part of it is, are you actually leaving it better, like did you pick up somebody else's trash?

Are you leaving it better than you found it, and then there's the bigger question, right?

Is like, what are you doing to ensure the sustainability of that activity?

And so that might be through how did you choose to get there, or what are your impacts on the climate in the rest of your life, right?

And are you active in trying to sort of reduce climate change or reduce other negative impacts to the outdoors in the rest of your life?

So I think it kind of goes from the micro, like in the moment when you're on the trail for you, to a little bit bigger which is like, all of y'all who are out there on the trail at the time, and like some people are really good about talking to people they see dropping trash, or whatever they're doing and saying, "Hey, I love this place and that makes..." I'm not good at that, but some people are really good at that, and then there's the sort of macro, like what are you doing?

And some people volunteer with trails crews, some people volunteer with other organizations, some people give time, some people give money.

There's lots of different ways I think, to contribute.

- We're getting quite a few questions about skiing, snow sports.

I wanna ask this one from a viewer named Peter who says, I've heard that the snowpack in the Central Cascades this past winter was one of the largest in many decades.

If so, how does that fit into the climate change story?

- Yeah, I wish I had those numbers at my fingertips from this year.

I know that it was quite a good year in many places, and that fits into the story I was telling about, like it's not a smooth road to the future, right?

We were talking, in our group we used to call it that climate change is a bumpy road, right?

So we're gonna have low snowpack years, and high snowpack years, and low snowpack years and high snowpack years.

And we're even gonna have some really great years.

But if you take an average over time, and this is what's challenging about climate change is that it's not, one year doesn't tell you the story, two years, five years doesn't tell you the story.

Climatologists look at 30-year averages.

And when you look at that over time, you see a diminishment.

So it's totally consistent, right?

There's no reason we can't have a good snow year, but I think one of the things where climate change did show up this year is the really rapid melt, right?

So we had a good snowpack in many places, and then it, boom, ended fast.

In many places it ended like at the season, at the average end of the year, but it shouldn't have ended at the average, 'cause it was way above average snowpack, right?

And so there's different ways it shows up, but that's one of them.

And so I think it's the good news, bad news, right?

The good news is we're gonna have some good years.

But the bad news is the good year doesn't tell us we're off the hook.

- So, what types of initiatives do you think that folks can vote on?

I mean, what's coming up in the November election that might help reduce or mitigate the effects of climate change in our region, any recommended resources too, organizations, websites, et cetera, to help educate voters on environmental issues?

Where would you point folks?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

I'm not actually sure what's on the ballot in terms of climate-specific initiatives.

I think what's important is to look at your own representatives or whether they be city council or state legislature, or federal Congress person, and see whether they are doing both things.

Thinking about how to sort of climate-proof, or build climate resilience, build resilience to the changes that are coming, and whether they're serious about acting quickly to reduce emissions.

So there's lots of different citizens groups that are involved in this, And I, as I said, professionally, I work on dealing with the impacts and sort of preparing ourselves for them, so I think I can give a list of things that people are probably maybe familiar already.

Climate Solutions is a local nonprofit that does a lot of work around climate and clean energy transition.

For outdoor folks, Protect Our Winters is an organization that skiers and others have been engaged with.

Many groups like American Alpine Club and National Audubon Society.

We didn't talk about birding at all, they are doing things.

And so I think all of those are really good sources for information about like what is on the ballot and how to make a difference that way.

- So to close this out, Amy, thank you.

This has been a fascinating conversation.

I'm really grateful for all the insights you can share.

I'm curious, what's next for you in adventuring out in the Pacific Northwest?

What have you got coming up later this year that you're looking forward to?

Well, I'm headed to the San Juans for a little getaway with my husband to celebrate our 20th anniversary.

And we...

I know, yeah.

Not possible, but somehow is.

And so we're gonna ride our bikes on the ferry, and ride our bikes around the islands and have a lovely couple of days.

That's our next thing that we've got coming.

- Wonderful.

Well, congratulations.

And thank you again for joining us.

To our series sponsor, Waldron, our gratitude for making today's event possible.

And to everyone watching at home, thank you for joining us today.

I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.

You can learn more about upcoming Crosscut events at crosscut.com/events, including our next installment of Northwest Newsmakers on September 14th with award-winning filmmaker, Michael Kirk, who's upcoming Frontline documentary, America After 9/11, reexamines the events of September 11th and the decisions that came after that transformed America and the world.

You can RSVP at Crosscut.com/events.

Thanks again to Amy Snover for joining us, for of you for your questions and your attention to this critical issue.

Thank you, everyone.

Have a great day.