Driving Climate Action with Outdoor Enthusiasts

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Sep 5

Mario Molina is the Executive Director of Protect Our Winters (aka POW). POW was founded in the late 2000s by professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones. They've grown to 130,000 supporters that consist of passionate outdoor athletes motivated to protect the places they live and love from climate change. POW's goal is to give a voice to the outdoor sports community (or the Outdoor State, as they call it) and channel it into political will to help get energy transition and related climate change policies passed.

Mario has been working in climate for many years. Prior to POW, he was the international director of the Climate Reality Project, which was created by former Vice President Al Gore. Before that, Mario led strategy and programs as deputy director at the Alliance for Climate Education.

Politics generally follows culture, not the other way around. In other words, political movements grow from cultural movements. By harnessing people's love of outdoor recreation and helping them share stories of how they directly observe the world changing around them, POW is helping to channel the cultural agenda around climate change. And by giving their supporters tangible things to do, policies for which to advocate and candidates to support, they're seeking to influence actual outcomes that can make a difference. You'll want to listen to this one in its entirety as Mario has a bit of a surprising announcement at the end. Enjoy the show!

Get connected:
Mario Molina LinkedIn
Protect Our Winters X / LinkedIn / Instagram
Cody Simms X / LinkedIn
MCJ Podcast / Collective / Instagram

*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded on Aug 2, 2023 (Published on Sept 5, 2023)

In this episode, we cover:

[2:38] An overview of Protect Our Winters (POW) and its origins
[5:36] Athlete stories that highlight the impact of climate change
[8:22] POW's theory of change and applications to the 'Outdoor State'
[14:44] Examples of athlete engagement in policy
[17:39] How POW determines which projects to support
[21:44] The org's 501(c)(4) arm that allows POW to endorse or campaign for certain candidates
[23:50] Challenges POW faced in getting brand partnerships
[26:21] What has proven effective in bridging cultural awareness with political action, and where tension still lies
[30:06] Mario's background and accomplishments
[36:42] Where POW needs help and how listeners can get involved

Cody Simms (00:00):
Today's guest on My Climate Journey is Mario Molina, executive Director of Protect Our Winters or POW. POW was founded in the late 2000s by professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones. They've grown to 130,000 supporters that consist of passionate outdoor athletes motivated to protect the places they live and love from climate change. POW's goal is to give a voice to the outdoor sports community and channel it into political will to help get energy transition and related climate change policies passed.
(00:34):
Mario has been working in climate for many years. Prior to POW, he was the international director at the Climate Reality Project, which was created by former Vice President Al Gore. Before that, Mario led strategy and programs as deputy director at the Alliance for Climate Education.
(00:52):
From my perspective, politics generally follows culture, not the other way around. Political movements grow from cultural movements. By harnessing people's love of outdoor recreation and helping those who identify as outdoor enthusiasts to share stories of how they directly observe the world changing around them, POW is helping to channel the cultural agenda around climate change. And by giving their supporters tangible things to do, policies for which to advocate and candidates to support, they're seeking to influence actual outcomes that can make a difference.
(01:27):
You'll want to listen to this one in entirety as Mario has a bit of a surprising announcement at the end. But before we start, I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (01:37):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (01:39):
And I'm Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (01:45):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (01:50):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
(02:03):
Mario, welcome to the show.
Mario Molina (02:05):
Cody. Thank you so much for having me.
Cody Simms (02:07):
Well, I think it's fun that we are both jumping on this podcast from up in the mountains in Colorado, different parts of the state, but I'm out visiting family right now and Colorado's home for you. So it's an apt place to have a conversation about protecting our winters.
Mario Molina (02:21):
Particularly with the heat wave that we just experienced all the way across the country. As you said, we're up in the mountains. I'm at about 8,500 feet and very rarely do we usually break 80, 85 degrees during the summer. We hit 93 just the week before last for a couple of days in a row.
Cody Simms (02:38):
You're just above me. I'm at 7,800 feet right now, but... We may have a lag in our internet connection as we talk as a result, but I'm sure we'll get through a good conversation. Why don't we start with just the really basic question of what is Protect Our Winters and how did it come about?
Mario Molina (02:51):
Yeah, Protect Our Winters, POW, is we are the leading organization for the outdoor sports community. We bring together a community of elite athletes, creative business leaders to advocate for bipartisan climate policies at both the state and federal levels. Our ethos is really that of protecting the places and the experiences that we all enjoy and thrive on in the outdoors. And a lot of us depend on for our livelihoods in the outdoors from the worst impacts of climate change that are to come.
(03:23):
It was started by Jeremy Jones who's a pro mountain snowboarder in 2009. And for about a decade, it hovered around four or five people. I came on board in 2017 shortly after the presidential election as the second executive director. And since then, we've grown to about 32 people and somewhere close to 180 alliance ambassadors, which includes creatives, it includes some of the world's top climbers, skiers, trail runners, mountain bikers, and in some of the world's leading brands in the outdoor industry such as Burton and Patagonia, as well as ski resorts and ski holding companies.
Cody Simms (04:11):
I saw, I think, on your website a fascinating line that said, "While the fossil fuel lobby may outspend environmentalists 20 to one in Washington, DC, sports crosses party lines." And it seems like a little bit of the ethos of POW is, "Let's lean into the real world impacts that people are seeing and feeling in the things they're doing when they do what they love." Is that sort of the right way to think about it?
Mario Molina (04:35):
Yeah. The shared idea six years ago when I joined POW that Jeremy and I both felt we were strongly aligned on was that while traditional environmental organizations start with climate, start with the environment and then try and get people behind that cause, what POW had the unique opportunity to do was to start by connecting with people's passion for outdoor sports and open the aperture and the gate of entry, so to speak, to a conversation on climate. And it's the same approach that we take when we meet with lawmakers in DC or at state capitals, and that is, "Here, let us share these amazing experiences. Let some of our athletes tell you about their experiences in the mountains and/or training for the Olympics and start with that. And then let's talk about what do we need to do in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate, or what do we need to do to really deploy clean energy at this scale that is necessary."
Cody Simms (05:36):
And what are some of the stories you often hear these athletes talking about citing, saying... I saw somewhere, I think it was in an interview you did where you said that, "Hey, just in the last 40 years, the amount of April snowpack in Colorado has declined by 20 to 60% according to the EPA." Presumably, that's an effect that people see firsthand with their eyes. I think that was one of the reasons Jeremy started POW in the first place, was he was realizing some of the trails that he used to love to snowboard on were all of a sudden no longer available to him in the years where he had been training. What are some of these stories you hear and what has tended to really resonate with people?
Mario Molina (06:18):
They range from higher avalanche danger in the Himalayas, weather windows not being as predictable for 8,000 meter peak of sense as they used to be weirding of weather patterns such as the oscillation of the jet stream in May or June. That's become far more pronounced to people like Jesse Diggins or Gus Schumacher talking about the difficulty that they sometimes have finding training grounds in Utah or places where they would've normally have had very predictable snow for training.
Cody Simms (06:52):
We did an episode a few months ago with Will Steger, who is a dog sled explorer in the Poles and now similarly runs a whole climate education program to help youth understand the impact of climate change. And he is able to show physical changes he's seen in the Poles happening over the years to help people realize that. At what age are you seeing outdoor enthusiasts start to really lean in and care?
Mario Molina (07:19):
It depends, but early teens. The younger people get the earlier and younger that they're becoming aware about the issue. The next generation, regardless of whether they're conservative or liberal, this is top of mind for them. They know that this is happening, they see it happening. They've been educated far better than most of us were growing up.
(07:37):
I honestly don't think we have an education problem. We've got an urgency and prioritization problem. It's not that people don't know about or even believe that climate change is real and even that it's happening. We did a pretty in-depth survey about, it's been now four years, of the outdoor sports community. And what we got back was that most of outdoor sports participants, most of the outdoors community, agrees that climate change is real, agrees that it's happening, agrees that something should be done about it, including 67, 68% of those who identified as conservatives. The challenge is not whether people believe it, see it, or think something should be done about it. The challenge is how far up or down on their priority lists does it come when it comes to advocacy or voting?
Cody Simms (08:22):
Let's move into that then. You have this incredible diagram on your website of the three legs of the POW stool in terms of your theory of change, right? And it talks about cultural change, it talks about political will, and it talks about technology and financial instruments. Can you just walk me through how you think about that and what areas you see Protect Our Winters playing in. And ultimately, how does the movement that you're building help ultimately drive change?
Mario Molina (08:48):
Our theory change is based basically on what we see as the landscape in transitioning to a clean energy future. So we have the technology and the financial instruments that are necessary to deploy large scale solutions rapidly. So it's not a matter of do we have the technology or does it cost too much? We have the technology, it's cost competitive. We have emergent technologies that are rapidly becoming cost competitive. And by that, I mean we have wind and solar outcompeting fossil fuels in most levelized markets in US. We have battery storage quickly becoming more affordable and longer lasting on that technology, improving drastically. And then in the midterm and long term, I think we see a lot of promise with small nuclear reactor technology, a lot of the recycling of critical minerals. Transmission continues to be, I think, one of the biggest problems that we have. And even there, we know how to solve it. It's a matter of getting the political will to make it far more efficient, and that's the next area.
(09:50):
So we know we have the finance, we know we have the capital flows, we know we have the technologies, we know we have the business models that work, but what we don't necessarily have is a political will. We have a slow moving process on this. We have some divisions over ideology, some divisions over market forces, some divisions over party lines and over priorities. And that's the piece that I think we need to work on the most, is just creating the political will across both sides of the aisle to make a clean energy transition a priority regardless of ideology, because it really is no longer a Republican or Democrats thing. What we're talking about is clean, cheap energy that also helps with energy security, upgrades to the grid that are absolutely necessary regardless of what the fuel source is.
(10:35):
And what I usually say is let the market forces compete. AI do believe that renewables will win nine out of 10 times in the current market. So getting the political will to be reflective, both of the public will but also of the realities of the market and where the technology is, I think is critical. What we've learned over the years, and I think every movement has seen this, is that political leaders don't lead, they follow. They respond to constituents. In that the third leg of the stool, it's driving that cultural change in society and driving the cultural change particularly with the constituencies that matter the most to make this a top priority because I don't think we're any longer fighting a battle on science of credibility as there's still the people, the extremes that will argue on it's not happening or it's not human cost or it's not that serious. I think we can dismiss those ideologies in terms of their political significance or their political weight.
(11:35):
The challenge that we're really facing is, how much of a priority is this? How much should we invest in it? How rapidly should we transition? And these are what types of technologies should we deploy and how is it actually going to work once we're talking about building transmission towers, building more renewable energy projects, citing them, et cetera. So that is I don't think quite at the forefront of the public's mind. We need a cultural shift to where we start thinking about the energy transition as the top priority for American innovation in the 21st century.
Cody Simms (12:06):
What I'm hearing a bit of is this idea that as an organization, Protect Our Winters needs to be informed on the technology pathways that are in front of us, informed on different methods of financing those pathways and understanding what they look like. But you're not necessarily creating those products, creating those pathways. You're just aware of them, understand them. And then you also understand the political landscape in which change has the opportunity to potentially happen. And your role is to combine the athletes and the people on the front end who have the ability to build presence and build awareness together with individual opportunities to push technology or financial change through individual political outcomes and try to marry those two together to where you can build influence at that local level or federal level as something is starting to happen. Am I hearing you correctly in terms of how these three legs work together?
Mario Molina (13:00):
Correct. So basically, we're taking those three ideas and then applying them to a very specific constituency, which is this group of people that we call the outdoor state. We refer to the outdoor state as the 50 million people in the US who self-identify as mountain bikers, climbers, skiers, snowboarders. I think there's 25 or 30 telemarkers in there as well, trail runners, et cetera, and saying, "Hey, if this group actually came together and made climate change a priority in both their voting record, in voting turnout, in civic engagement, all levels of government, local, state, and federal, we would be more powerful than any of the swing states, all of the swing states put together."
(13:47):
And so our goal is to make that outdoor state the most influential constituency on the US and climate by providing A, the education, B, the resources, and C, the opportunities to leverage that power. And our athletes are at the very tip of that spear. The power that our athletes have to gain access. The credibility that our athletes have with their followers makes this a really unique group of people to represent the values of a community that appreciates the importance of transitioning to a clean energy economy.
Cody Simms (14:20):
In practice, does that look like a snowboarder maybe mentioning something on Instagram or talking about the need for their followers to pay attention to something on TikTok or the like? Is that what the rubber meets the road ends up looking like for Protect Our Winters and then you all step in as an organization and provide the framework for the broad mass of followers to be able to take action?
Mario Molina (14:44):
Yeah, let me give you a few specific examples of what that looks like on the ground. So for example, we had a group of our athletes and business leaders lobby in Washington DC on behalf of the IRA and meet directly with their elected officials. Jesse Diggins, who you probably know, US Olympic medalist, was part of that group and the access that she can gain because of who she is and her public persona is unparalleled to that of many people. And then our role is to provide them with the information and the training on how to deliver an advocacy message to those elected officials. That's one of the ways that it looks like. We recently did that. We had a trip to Washington, DC just about a month ago advocating for new transmission legislation. And it wasn't the organization advocating for it, it was our athletes and business leaders whom we had been training for weeks ahead of this trip.
(15:38):
Another example is Mikaela Shiffrin speaking at the Economist Sustainability Week. Also, a couple of months ago, I worked with her very closely to talk about the importance of prioritizing systemic policy changes over individual behavior change. And so, when the economist interviewed her and was asking a lot about, "Oh, what should people do or what can skiers do?", she very eloquently spoke to the importance of elected officials, of policy, of implementation of Inflation Reduction Act components, et cetera. So it's providing them with the information and the training to speak to these issues in a very sophisticated way that is unexpected from their background that they're coming from. Or it may look like Graham Zimmerman who is world renowned Alpinist and Piolets d'Or recipient showing up at a local public utility commission hearing, supporting a wind energy project in a county. So doing the grassroots work to bring the outdoor state's voice to those permitting hearings.
Yin Lu (16:39):
Hey everyone, I'm Yin, a partner at MCJ Collective here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast.
(16:51):
We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. Each week, we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community, A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established, and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly Women in Climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more. Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (17:39):
How do you go about figuring out which projects Protect Our Winters wants to get behind? I assume you listen to the voices of both your broad community as well as some of your athletes members, as well as come up with projects that you yourselves are excited to support from an organizational perspective. What does that project prioritization process look like for you in terms of where to lean in with your own political will?
Mario Molina (18:05):
That's a great question. For us, we have a set of guiding principles upon which we try to make most of our decisions, particularly regarding prioritizing the work that we do. And one of those is, where can we add value? The other is, where are we not replicating what other organizations are doing that they do well? Where can we leverage our superpower? And our superpower really is the access to these outdoor brands, CEOs and athletes. When you apply those three filters and then add the filter of geography, where do we have a base, where would their voices actually be resonant with an outdoor sports community and then you look for projects, you would be surprised at how quickly you filtered out a lot of possibilities, and you end up looking at a handful of projects across mostly Western states, the Western US.
(18:52):
So our priority states are Utah, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona. Most of our work is happening in most Montana, Colorado, and some in Nevada. You add the geographic filter to it and we end up being pretty laser focused on where can we add value and where should we be doing that work.
Cody Simms (19:11):
I noticed two Colorados, both sitting in Colorado, two Colorado specific projects on your website that it sounds like either are most recent projects or current ones. One about supporting the Thompson divide and helping to ensure Western Colorado's lands receive federal protection and one around supporting Colorado Senate Bill 200, which were around giving regulatory teeth to Governor Polis' roadmap to basically create regulations for air quality control. And some of that even looked like almost an emissions tax. Can you share a little bit about those as potential examples of how you've garnered local support around quite local issues leveraging this broad outdoor state?
Mario Molina (19:52):
Yeah, those are good examples. The Thompson Divide was part of the CORE Act, which sought to protect close to 400,000 acres of wilderness in Colorado that had both historical significance, but also making sure to protect it from potential methane exploitation. And so there we worked very much with the grassroots communities and partners to try and pressure Congress to pass this legislation to protect it. It was a couple of years effort, and finally it passed earlier this year. And that is an example of where we worked with Josh Jesperson, who is one of our athletes, former Navy SEAL, outstanding, very accomplished snowboarder. He's the first person to splitboard all of Colorado's Fourteeners and has a deep, deep passion for that area. So we worked with him as a spokesperson both in front of Congress, in front of the media to advocate for the preservation of the divide.
(20:45):
The SB 200, we worked with a lot of our local brand partners, outdoor industry brand partners here in Colorado, and a lot of our local athletes like Matt Siegel, who is a North Face professional climber, and Clare Gallagher, who's a professional runner for Patagonia and several others to testify in front of the PUC and to testify in front of the Colorado legislation in favor of giving some regulatory teeth to the map that Governor Polis had laid out.
(21:10):
And then more recently, we've worked in the Pacific Northwest, the Horse Heaven Project, which is a renewable energy project grant testifying on behalf of the project at a POC commission hearing. And then this year, our sister organization, Protect our Winter's Action Fund, which is a 501(c)(4), did a lot of work in getting rural electric cooperative board members elected throughout Colorado who want to leverage the $9 billion available from the Inflation Reduction Act through USDA to transition away from coal to renewables.
Cody Simms (21:44):
So you mentioned the 501(c)(4) Arm, which is the political advocacy arm of Protect Our Winters, which I think allows you to get into specific policy, not just push broad topical agenda. How does that tend to work for you? You all are able to actually raise capital to rally support around specific policy and legislation that you want to see happen.
Mario Molina (22:07):
To maybe add a little nuance to it, the POW, the 501(c)(3), can advocate for specific policies without a problem. What it cannot do is it cannot advocate for specific candidates during elections. It cannot get involved in the electoral cycle, but the 501(c)(4) can. And the 501(c)(4) can advocate for issues on elections and it can advocate for specific candidates during elections. And so, what it allows us to do is it allows us to actually endorse candidates or campaign for candidates of either party that we believe are pro energy transition to pro clean energy transition. And so, we don't necessarily ask that they embrace entire policy packages, but we ask that they at least make climate or the clean energy transition a priority in their legislative agenda and that they have very specific ideas for solutions and are willing to have a voting record that addresses solutions.
(23:07):
We do that not only for state and federal legislator elections, but we recently just did it again for our rural electric co-op board elections. They cover about 70% of US landmass and they only provide about 12% of US electricity, but they cover huge geographic areas. And there's $9 billion in the IRA adjudicated through the USDA for rural electric co-ops to be able to minimize their emissions. And the easiest way for them to minimize their emissions is to buy themselves out of PPAs with coal-fired power plants or natural gas and transition to renewables. And so, those decisions are actually made by local board members of the rural electric co-ops, and those local board members are oftentimes selected by 100 people, 200 people.
Cody Simms (23:50):
And I noticed part of looks like the way you've built your alliance of support is the support of, literally it looks like hundreds of outdoor brands, brands that I presume are providing you with local sponsorship opportunities, potentially some capital in addition to just helping to raise awareness. How has the reception been in working with these brands and saying like, "Hey, we're going to get political"? Sometimes that can scare brands away, but in your case it doesn't look like it has.
Mario Molina (24:18):
It's been a labor of love, man. It took a while. So in 2018 when we approached a lot of brands and asked them, "Hey, will you support us in doing a get-out-the-vote effort? Will you support us in getting political?" The response was mostly tepid at best. Some of the brands would say, "We'll give you some money, but we don't want our logo associated with it. We are just not going to get political because we are an apolitical brand. Our board, our stakeholders, our whoever, just don't want to get into this." And I think what we've seen is just an evolution. And I'd like to think that we were influential in evolving the conversation within the outdoor industry to a place that says, "You don't have to be partisan, but you have to be engaged in the civic process. You have to be engaged in the democratic process."
(25:06):
And so there's nothing that should scare people away or there's nothing partisan about asking people to vote, so they get out and vote. And if your priority as a brand is the outdoors and if your priority as a brand is the environment, there should be no conflict of interest in asking people to get out and vote their conscience on the environment and on the outdoors.
(25:27):
And I'm really happy to say we've seen an evolution in the last five years from where in 2018 we had a get-out-the-vote messaging that most brands wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. And I got to give credit there to Burton, Burton Snowboards, they were onboard early on. They were onboard hard, they were 100% committed from the beginning to where in 2020 you saw a lot of outdoor brands, I wouldn't say most, but a lot of the major outdoor brands, actually make civic engagement a priority in their messaging. A lot of them adopting climate messaging or clean energy messaging as part of their messaging. And then post 2020, obviously with the social justice movement and the crisis that surfaced out of the George Floyd murder in 2020, that we've seen more and more brands actually take a position on social or environmental issues.
Cody Simms (26:21):
I love that it's been a labor of love. And clearly, you're making great progress with it. That gets to one of my final questions that I want to talk with you about, which is, gosh, you've been in this role now for, I think you said six or seven years, what have you learned that really works? Where do you feel like you all have found some magic in connecting cultural awareness to political action? And where do you think there is still a lot of unsolved friction in general for people who are trying to do movement building?
Mario Molina (26:50):
For us, trusting our athletes and trusting our alliance members and trusting our CEOs to be the messengers is the most effective strategy that we have. I've said this all the time, like Jeremy and POW is not the staff. POW is definitely not me. POW is the network of people that identify with the brand and at the tip of the spear of that network, the representatives are the alliance members. And so, empowering trusted messengers with the resources, the opportunities, and the tools and the knowledge to go and speak their values has been incredibly effective.
(27:32):
I think where the friction still lies, it's movement building in general not just for POW. It's that we have this idea, we have this vision, we have this goal of making the clean energy transition a nonpartisan or bipartisan or cross partisan issue. And that'll sounds great until we meet people who don't agree with us on maybe 10 other issues. And we expect people to quote, unquote, "come over to our side." We speak a certain language, we speak in a certain way, we bucket certain issues together, and we have this packet ideology that excludes a lot of people who may not agree with all of the ideology, but who would be allies on things like clean energy transition on the environment, but who don't speak that same language, don't move in our circles, don't share all of our values. And I think that that's where we struggle with movement building in general.
(28:32):
I think the same applies when we think about topics of DEI. We talk about climate justice, we talk about environmental justice, we talk about intersectionality, et cetera. We haven't really figured out how do we create spaces and conversations that allow for all of these voices to be represented and find the common ground that's needed to move this thing forward.
(28:55):
We have a video that I encourage people to check out. It's called our Common Ground. And the idea is that what America is, what America is built on is the land itself. We came here through different pathways. I myself am an immigrant. Some people's ancestors were brought here by force. Other people chose to come here. So we have different ways that we got here and that may affect our lived experiences and our ideologies, but ultimately, we all live on the land. We all live on this beautiful chunk of ground called the United States of America from sea to shining sea, and that it's the love of the land that we should really be prioritizing as the first bonding issue to bring us together to seek for solutions on those things that are the most threatening to the land itself.
Cody Simms (29:40):
What a great answer and a good reminder to all of us to try to avoid speaking in code, avoid using coded language and language that may help people identify with me because I say the same words that they want me to say, but in reality it doesn't necessarily help build bridges. And I think it's a good reminder for all of us who care about climate change to really focus on the specific challenges at hand around how the world around us is physically changing.
(30:06):
The last thing I want to make sure we do is to talk a little bit about your background. Clearly now in however long we've been talking, you have incredible command of these issues. This is a space you've personally been working in for the bulk of your career. Maybe share a little bit about what you were doing before Protect Our Winters, and then I think you also have maybe a little bit to share about what may be coming next for you as well.
Mario Molina (30:29):
Mine is a pinball story of how I got here. I didn't come here at a straight path. So I'm originally from Guatemala. I was born and raised in Guatemala. I went to undergraduate in Arkansas where I majored in biology. Then went back home and started the first outdoor adventure guide service, so we did mountain bike trips and we did rafting trips. Did that for about three years before going back to graduate school in North Carolina. And in North Carolina, I was doing a lot of wetland stuff. I had a lot of wetland mitigation work and a lot of large scale ecosystem analysis. That was the first time that I started hearing about climate as this changing variable that could have cataclysmic and cascading effects across all areas of the ecosystem, but somewhat put it behind in the back of my mind. I'm dating myself, but this was early 2000s, so we still had a lot to learn.
(31:19):
And then for the next eight years, I did a lot of international work. So I lived in the Dominican Republic, Australia, Ecuador, and Peru, and my role was really to set up these conservation and environmental sustainability programs and combine them with adventure travel for volunteers. And so it was a fantastic gig, but I started noticing that regardless of whether it was coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef or coastal erosion in the Dominican Republic or glacial recession on Cotopaxi in the Andes, the common denominator for the greatest threat that all of these landscapes were facing was climate. And so I made a conscious decision to make a bit of a career shift and work on climate directly.
(32:02):
My first climate gig, so to speak, was at the Alliance for Climate Education, which at the time was a relatively small organization seeking to educate high school students and incorporate climate change into high school curriculum. So we did a lot of direct work with high schools, but we also managed to get climate change incorporated into the national curriculum. So it was a part of national science curriculum.
(32:26):
From there, I spent five years working for former Vice President Al Gore's organization, the Climate Reality Project. At first really building and scaling his leadership training program. They were used to running 80 to 200 people trainings, and their goal was to be able to run trainings that hosted 800 to 1,000 people at a time, both domestically and internationally. And so I set up about 12 of those, helped set up about 12 of those. And as part of that, I did a lot of the advanced work. So it required me going to India and meeting with the Indian Minister for Energy and meeting with the Indian National Bank, identifying what were the pathways for implementation, what were the pathways, and then setting up those meetings for the vice president to try and leverage his image and his influence to get to these solutions and did that in Brazil, did that in India, did it in Australia, South Africa and the Philippines.
(33:22):
And the Philippines, we were able to get a carbon tax law passed by working very closely with the senator there. In Brazil, we worked very closely with the Brazilian committee developing their NDC, as well as in Mexico, their nationally determined contribution. That's what went into Paris. And then post Paris, my role there was for a couple of years to work with our different affiliate offices to see what's the role that civil society can play in advocating for implementation of the Paris Agreement. I was doing that when 2016 came around, and I really felt like it was time to dedicate myself more to domestic work.
(33:58):
I had also done a couple of projects with Protect Our Winters early in its infancy and realized that there was a lot of unrealized potential in the organization. The idea was fantastic, the people involved were really great and it was doing a lot of opportunistic work, but I didn't really see from the outside, at least I didn't really see that it had a holistic multi-year strategy or a theory of change. So when the opportunity came to join and take the reins as the executive director, I kind of jumped at it. And it was a very good fit between my personal background. I'm an avid mountain biker and splitboarder, snowboarder, climber. And so, a lot of those personal passions and my professional background and understanding.
(34:42):
In my career previous, I'd always also developed close personal relationships with a lot of developers or people in the development space, so I understood what some of the practical challenges were for developers. I think a lot of times nonprofits go off under think tank ways and don't really connect with the people that are doing the work. And what they think the priority is may not actually be the immediate priority for developers, so I've always tried to keep that in mind on my work, like, what are the immediate obstacles that need to be removed in order to speed up the transition? And that informed a lot of my strategy work at POW. And so we focused on get-out-the-vote, civic engagement, and then implementation.
(35:19):
That's been the journey. When I started at POW, we were five people. We're now 34. The other piece was I felt strongly that there were a lot of people who were not one show ponies in terms of they didn't only snowboard or ski, so POW has its genesis and had its roots in snow sports, but I really saw an opportunity to expand into adventure sports, everybody that skis, probably mountain bikes or climbs. There's a lot of trail runners out there who enjoy the mountains. So I really wanted to see POW reach a much broader set of audiences and penetrate much broader markets. So in the last few years, we started with adding trail runners and rock climbers, and lastly, mountain bikers or actually bikers in general. It's been a great ride in the organization two months short of six years, and I'll be stepping down at the end of September.
Cody Simms (36:07):
Big news. First of all, congrats on all that you've accomplished. And then I guess, for folks... We have a highly influential listenership here. So for folks who either may have interest in the role themselves or who may know someone who's just a perfect fit, what are you looking for in your successor? What is the organization looking for in your successor?
Mario Molina (36:26):
I think those conversations are ongoing with the board right now in terms of finding the perfect profile. I think by the time this airs, the job description will very likely be out there and be public. So I definitely encourage anyone who's got a passion for the outdoors and for climate to take a look at it and see if it's a fit.
Cody Simms (36:42):
And then beyond the executive directorship, in general, where does POW need help right now? Where could listeners who are inspired by what the organization is doing, based on everything that you've described, where can they put their hand up and help you all?
Mario Molina (36:57):
Well, thank you for asking. So, a few things. So first, it's, we have a program that we developed with the Crux Academy, which is our advocacy program. It's their curriculum. So we encourage people to spread that far and wide amongst employees, customers, friends, et cetera. Basically, the 101 through 301 on POW, advocacy, climate, science solutions, and our approach. We have Team POW on our website so you can join and become a member of the organization. And we encourage listeners to join Team POW. And then obviously, if there's people out there who are inspired by the mission, who have the means, we're always in need of more support to scale our work. We've gone from a very, very small organization to a just small organization, but POW regularly punches above its weight class. These athletes, these ambassadors, they're amazing people and we just want to be able to continue to provide more and more resources to training, educating, and deploying them in this space.
Cody Simms (37:53):
Well, Mario, I'm really grateful for you for joining us today. I'm grateful for you for putting up with my terrible mountain internet connection as we've been trying to record. Those of you who are listening, hopefully this is stitched together seamlessly, but my internet has dropped out three times in the middle of the interview. And most of all, I'm really grateful for all the work that you've done, all that you and POW are doing to drive awareness. I can't wait to hear what's next for you personally and for what's next with Protect Our Winters.
Mario Molina (38:21):
Well, thanks so much, Cody. This has been great. I really, really appreciate the interest. I really appreciate you getting us in front of your audience, who is, I think, a great audience to learn a little bit more about POW and what we do, and certainly hope that we cross paths again in whatever capacity that is.
Jason Jacobs (38:36):
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey Podcast.
Cody Simms (38:40):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity.
Jason Jacobs (38:49):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at mcjcollective.com. And if you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter at @mcjpod.
Yin Lu (39:02):
For weekly climate op-eds, jobs, community events, and investment announcements from our MCJ Venture Funds, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
Cody Simms (39:12):
Thanks, and see you next episode.