The most decorated U.S. cross-country skier of all time easily could sit back and focus on her task at hand: winning races. But to anyone who believes that’s even a consideration for Jessie Diggins, here’s her message:
Who am I to not care? I could just bury my head in the sand and watch the world burn, or I could do what I can, where I can, when I can.
The Olympic gold medalist is a member of Protect Our Winters (POW). The non-profit is a climate advocacy organization that focuses on mobilizing the outdoor community to create solutions and enact change. Diggins is part of the POW Athlete Alliance, which empowers professional athletes to advocate for climate action. “Athletes back in the day were taught to ‘shut up and dribble, stay in your lane. How dare you have an opinion on something that isn't your exact sport and trying to win.' But I've been very passionate about caring about things and using this platform, because I see it as such an amazing opportunity,” Diggins said.
Cross-country skier Gus Schumacher, a member of Team USA with Diggins, also is a member of POW. She says she works very hard to be a role model, especially for her younger teammates, and to provide advice. "Whatever your thing is, if you find a passion, it can bring a level of depth to everything that you do. It brings so much more meaning to your career as well," Diggins said.
Diggins started skiing when she was just 3 years old in Afton, Minnesota. As she witnessed her surroundings change firsthand over the years, she felt compelled to speak up. “Skiers are the canaries in the coal mine because we're seeing these mountain towns that have counted on snow their entire winter economy, all the locals, the people we've become friends with, their livelihood is tied to a winter season. This is impacting people that we care about, and it's impacting our races,” Diggins said. As a result, she was compelled to get involved with POW and use her voice.
She has many examples of seeing and feeling the signs of climate change around her during competition but a couple in particular stick out in her memory. Diggins recalled back in January 2023 when she was participating in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup in Les Rousses, France, where the event was being held for the first time. She described an all-out effort during “a really low snow year,” to pull off the World Cup despite the unseasonable weather. “Every single person in the town, like 90-year-old men went out to the lake and chipped chunks of ice, and they crushed up the ice and carted it out to a field in the high-altitude mountains in France that should have been covered in snow. And they spread crushed ice from the lake around the loop, and then they trucked in snow. We raced on this raised platform of ice from the lake with snow on top,” Diggins said. She said during the World Cup in Minneapolis, Minnesota the following year she observed a similar situation, and without a last minute “miracle snowstorm,” the event almost didn’t happen.
Despite the warning signs, the cross-country skier admits at first, she was hesitant to pursue climate advocacy. Diggins said she felt guilty about some of her actions like flying all over the world for competitions and events and questioned: “Who am I to say I care about climate?” Then she discovered the idea of imperfect advocacy, which she’s tried to embody. “We're allowed to care about things, even if we are not the experts in them and we're not perfect at them,” Diggins said. She realized by doing what she can and where she can, it’s helped her feel less stress and anxiety about the climate.
Diggins joined POW after winning gold at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games. Ever since, she’s used her place on the Olympic podium as a platform to share stories about the impact climate change is having on the sports community. “I’ve gone on lobby trips to D.C. and gotten a chance to physically use my Olympic medals to get in the door to have meetings with senators and representatives and those have felt quite impactful,” Diggins said. While she’s currently busy training for the upcoming Games and World Cup season, she hopes to get back to work in the nation’s capital in the spring.
Her work with POW isn’t just about reaching policymakers but also about connecting with local communities. “There's people on both sides of the political aisle who love camping, hiking, fishing, skiing, snowboarding. People love to recreate outdoors, and we care about these amazing places. We want to protect them,” Diggins said. The Olympian says POW provides access to resources, like a climate advocacy guidebook, which recommends solutions people can implement in their everyday lives.
Sunday, Sept. 21 is a day of action that POW, as well as other climate advocacy groups, are participating in called Sun Day. “It's celebrating all our renewables because it is cheaper now to produce energy from the sun than to light things on fire. The narrative has been controlled in such a way that people are like 'it’s too expensive, it's too hard, it's not the right solution for me...I know I should do it morally, but it doesn't work,' But it's like, no, you should do it because it's financially the best thing for you as well,” Diggins said.
While Diggins says she’ll be skiing up a mountain and can’t actively participate, she’s sharing the message of the day through social media — a large part of the role the Athlete Alliance plays for POW. “If I have that voice in this moment, I want to use it and make it count while I can,” Diggins said.