Big Hairy Audacious Goals

Big Hairy Audacious Goals (or BHAGs) seem to be all the rage for sustainability departments. 

To name a few:

• 80 by 2050 – an 80% reduction in total carbon footprint by 2050
• 2022/2032
• 100% Renewable
• Various iterations of net-zero
  • Net Zero Carbon
  • Net Zero Energy
  • Net Zero Water

I’m going to follow the “shit sandwich” technique to dig into Big Hairy Audacious Goals. For those of you that don’t know, a shit sandwich is a feedback technique that involves something positive (bread), negative feedback (shit), and some more positive feedback (bread). 

Organizational or institutional goals are critical, and they can be challenging to arrive at. Having a stated goal as an organization requires some combination of leadership, consensus, and alignment. It is a considerable investment to pursue a BHAG and requires confidence and commitment to publish your goals.

Unfortunately, the current crop of sustainability goals nationwide are partial solutions at best and dangerous distractions at worst. I am going to pick on my home community, Park City, UT. I was part of setting two goals and laying the groundwork for a third. The first two goals were adopted simultaneously, 2022/2032 Net Zero, where the municipal operations achieve net-zero carbon by 2022, and the whole community achieves net zero carbon by 2032. The third goal is 100% renewable, which was adopted shortly after I left. These are aggressive and admirable goals. They are frequently cited as the most aggressive municipal goals in North America (if not the Western world) if you ignore scope, scale, and impact. On the surface, these are great goals. I diverge because these goals do not address Park City’s number one threat, climate adaptation.

Park City is a small mountain town dependent on winter resort tourism and major events to remain the small, wealthy community it is. The last round of climate projections identified that Park City’s highest resort altitudes would experience a 50/50 rain snow mix by 2035 and that the resort bases would be inoperable at this time. Beyond making it a mild, muddy winter, there are profound impacts on the local workforce and droves of disappointed tourists. 

Beyond environmental factors, known economic trends are impacting Park City. The snowsports industry has been losing marketshare and consumers steadily since the early 1990s. A combination of expense, other vacation opportunities, and loss of feeder resorts has meant fewer people are introduced to snowsports at the correct price point. In snowsports, most people start somewhere local. For example, I started at Grand Geneva, WI, where a day on the mountain cost maybe $75 (adjusted for 2020), including rentals, and I was taking laps on a former landfill. Ski vacations in Park City average more than $10,000 for a six-day trip so that you can imagine the gap. To further compound this dynamic, climate change has made small, feeder resorts challenging to operate, resulting in some consolidation but, more significantly, a lot of closures.

Keeping this relatively simple, we have three major factors at play in Park City:

1. Economic dependence on snow
2. A known and predictable loss of snow within 20 years
3. An existing economic model that is fundamentally failing, despite a short-term boom.

The goals we see attempting to address this problem are squarely in the camp of carbon mitigation (net-zero 2022, net-zero 2032, and 100% renewable). Carbon mitigation is hugely important, and climate change is both a meta-population problem and longitudinal. There are tens of thousands of years of consequences for our current level of carbon pollution. So, solving a +10,000 year problem doesn’t do a thing for a 20-year problem.

Long story short, the current goals are ambitious and solves a problem, but they don’t solve THE problem. You have the wrong goal if you can be 100% successful with a goal and still fail more broadly.

If these were my goals, I would keep the 2022 goal, adapt the 2032 goal to an 80% reduction, and introduce deep economic development and diversification goals. Park City needs a new economy, and local economies take time to take root, grow, and mature. As easy as these two sentences are to write, I fully acknowledge the powerful narratives, psycological hurdles, institutional obstacles that make this goal a big lift.

Park City should feel good about a few things. First, it is resource-rich. Second, it is small (which should mean nimble). Third, it has made some great gains through robust event schedules, summertime activities, and economic diversification.