One of the most fantastically-interactive moments from our EVOLVE Summit, a first-ever event that The Inertia team pulled off in uber-successful fashion this weekend (which we’re very proud of as you can tell from perusing the site), had everything to do with cell phones. I mean, usually, we’d encourage people to get off that ear-plug and into the “now.” But when Jeremy Jones, while speaking with Greg Long and Forrest Shearer about How Athletes Can Use Their Platforms to Protect Our Planet, prompted the audience to text his organization, Protect Our Winters, most everyone pulled out their pocket computers and went to work.
Lights from screens lit up the room as the crowd found their handhelds and tapped the POW line, making a pledge to vote during the upcoming mid-terms and send weather-change deniers packing.
It was another really cool moment, in a long stream of a really cool moments from an event that created a sense of uncontained optimism for everyone who was lucky enough to be sitting in L.A.’s Playa Studios that night.
Jeremy, snowboarding’s preeminent big mountain maestro, pleaded with the young and old to turn around poor voter turnout numbers from the last election and change the course of our environment immediately. Forrest, who grew up in Dana Point, California and became a professional snowboarder, has intimate knowledge of both the ocean and mountain environs and led the panel seamlessly.
Greg, then summed up what needs to be done from any industry not on board, but especially the one he’s most familiar with: “These surfing brands are grabbing on to youth and individuals to sell a product,” Long said. “Within that, there’s a tremendous amount of space to be utilized in also selling a positive message for change. I feel in the surf industry, that (message has) been neglected. Where it’s always been, ‘what’s the next color trend and fabric to push and up our profits.’ Just as equally (brands) can also be sending out a message that the next generation that wants to dress and train like (the current star) should also have a responsibility and be encouraged by those brands to be spreading that message of environmental awareness and consciousness, to be influencing that change as well.”
Both Jeremy and Greg pushed a similar agenda: doing nothing simply isn’t an option anymore. Change talks and apathy can see itself out.
