Is Colorado the country’s climate change capital?

A little over a week ago, the Trump administration undercut the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to control pollution and combat climate change. At the same time, Colorado is suffering from record low snowfall and record high winter temperatures.

Does that make Colorado the country’s climate change capital?

Obviously other states have their own concerns. Any oceanfront town could find itself underwater, literally, in the next century. Farmers in the Midwest may be subject to failing crops. Heatwaves in southern states will become increasingly deadly.

Still, Colorado has been particularly vulnerable to climate change, regardless of whether our current president believes in it or not.

For starters, the state has long been known for its winter sports and tourism industry. Look no further than the Olympic skiers born and raised here bringing back precious medals from Milan. Personally, I spent my high school years working odd jobs, from ski check attendant to retail salesperson, on Keystone Mountain between powder days. 

Things have changed since then.

For starters, ski resorts have struggled to adjust to changing weather patterns over the past decade. Much of that can be attributed to later initial snowfall. In the 1980s it seemed like every other Halloween I had to wear a heavy jacket over my costume to trick-or-treat in the snow. This year Denver didn’t get its first snow until after Thanksgiving.

Late, light snow in October, November and early December can decimate the holiday ski season. No one wants to pay thousands of dollars for a ski trip over slopes with grass and rocks poking through thin base layers of manmade snow. Similarly, when February feels like April, it threatens the March Spring Break season, the normal last hurrah of ski resorts.

The cascading effect means fewer hours for fewer staff. That in turn leads to smaller paychecks and struggling families. Communities strain to meet needs. For example, as the Colorado Sun has reported, mountain town foodbanks have struggled to keep up with increased need.

That is how snow loss leads to real, human loss.

But despite its high-profile association with our state, lagging ski industry numbers are not the most concerning effects we have seen from climate change in Colorado. The lack of winter snow means far more dangerous and pervasive problems every summer.

For any native Coloradans over the age of 40, you can likely remember summers when afternoon thundershowers broke the heat and kept even July and August relatively comfortable. That is no longer the case.

Instead, we suffer through the long, unbroken heat associated with desert cities like Las Vegas or Phoenix. Without the regular thunderstorms passing through the metro area, summer bakes our neighborhoods without respite.

The lack of snowfall combined with hotter summers turns the state into a tinderbox every year. Parched forests full of beetle kill pines become susceptible to lightning strikes and careless campers. One spark leads to weeks of firefighters and forestry service workers — or what is left after Trump reductions — working to contain enormous pyres. An unlucky shift of wind regularly  endangers lives and homes.

It also helps drive summer tourism into the same toilet as winter sports. 

Who wants to go on a hike ascending thousands of feet while breathing smoke remnants the whole time? Even if you reach a scenic overlook, it is often clouded by ash particles that make distant vistas appear hazy and undefined. It is hardly the postcard-worthy scene we became accustomed to in prior years.

Throw in the restrictions on camp fires, low-water runoff shortening rafting season and harming fishing holes, and Colorado summers become much less appealing. Better than nothing, but worse than before. And each year seems to take another step down.

This winter has been abysmal. That means the summer will likely be even worse.

The long-term ramifications of climate change include dire consequences for huge swaths of the globe. Famine, water-scarcity and loss of habitable lands will become increasingly common over the next few decades. Mass migration and economic pressures could lead to armed conflicts and large-scale humanitarian crises. Next to that, ski resort patronage and scenic hikes pale in comparison.

But to date predictions of such dire consequences have failed to convince enough people that change must be made and sacrifices endured. The predicted problems seem too remote and too divorced from the everyday lives of most people. It is a similar scenario to American voters’ failure to address the rise of autocracy because the price of eggs seemed too high in November 2024.

Like a mountain in the distance, the climate problem appears to be a problem for later. It is not until you find yourself at the base staring up that the difficulty presents itself.

In this case, Coloradans find themselves headed up the first ridge of a 14er. Changing climate in our state leads to changes in how we conduct our lives. It may not be too steep or too rocky or too deadly yet, but the path up is evident.

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.

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