Longtime skiers — and even just the monied crowds that visit the resorts on the storied Alpine slopes — can tell you that the snow is, simply, not the same anymore. Some slopes at lower altitudes (and lower price points) haven’t even been able to open this season due to lack of snow cover. And an increase in heat waves combined with a decline in snowfall does not a winter playground make.
It’s yet another tangible sign that the climate change wrought by global warming cannot be ignored. Andreas Kluth grew up skiing and fears his own children will be the last generation to do so as well. But we’ve been pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for decades, warming the planet and especially the Alps. “It should have been obvious that skiing was one great example of the many indulgences and luxuries that are most to blame for climate change,” he writes. “A skier’s carbon footprint is huge — and that was true even before we needed machines to make artificial snow to replace the natural sort.”
