Ski resorts battle for a future as snow declines in climate crisis | Climate crisis

After promising early showers of snow in some areas of Europe this fall resumed the pattern of past years and rain and ice took over.

In the ski resorts of Morzine and Les Gets in the French Alps, the heavy rainfall meant that the full opening of resorts was postponed until two days before Christmas, leaving the industry and the millions of tourists planning excursions to stare at the sky in hope.

But no amount of wishing and hoping will overcome what is an existential threat to Alpine skiing, a $30bn (£23.8bn) industry that provides the most popular ski destination in the world.

The science is clear and spelled out in carefully weighted peer-reviewed reports. The most recentthis year, warned that at 2C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, 53% of the 28 European resorts surveyed would be at very high risk of a rare amount of snow.

Scarce snow was defined as the poorest coverage seen on average every five years between 1961 and 1990.

If the world were to reach 4C of warming, 98% of resorts would be at very high risk of scarce snow cover.

Another study revealed how snow cover in the Alps has experienced an “unprecedented” decline over the past 600 years, with the duration of the cover now 36 days shorter.

Some respond by clinging to the idea that skiing will and can survive if global temperatures are kept to the limits set by the Paris Agreement, and if the industry adapts.

But rumblings of discontent over the lack of action to ensure the survival of the sport by the International Ski Federation (FIS) have erupted this year.

The FIS was at the center of a climate story in 2019 when Gian Franco Kasper, its then president, revealed himself as a climate denier. in an interviewarguing that he would rather mingle with dictators than deal with environmentalists.

He then leave and was replaced by Johan Eliasch. But that didn’t take the heat off the federation.

This year, 500 professional winter sports athletes published a letter a call for greater climate action by FIS. They highlighted a competition schedule that forced skiers to take air flights back and forth across the Atlantic from week to week, creating unnecessarily large carbon footprints, and called on the federation to open the season later and start it earlier end to respect the changing climate.

This was followed by a petition in October for the federation to do more to tackle climate changewhich attracted more than 35,000 signatures.

The campaign wants the FIS to publish its own environmental impact with full transparency, move the racing calendar by at least one month to respect the changing climate, reduce the requirement for air travel and use its political influence to advocate for climate action at a government level.

The FIS said that as a signatory to the UN’s Sport for Climate Action Framework (UNFCCC) it is committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. “We are working on a sustainability plan that will ensure we collect as much data as possible during the upcoming winter season to provide the most accurate estimate of our CO₂ footprint

“We have postponed the start of the season for one week and will continue to keep a close eye on whether we should start the season even later.”

Dom Winter, from Protect our Winters UK, which is behind the petition, said science had shown the death of skiing was not inevitable if global emissions were reduced and it was motivating climate action in the winter sports community. “The future of winter sports depends on how well we reduce emissions in the coming decades,” Winter said.

He added: “Certainly at 2C the lower altitude resorts will be in big trouble. But there will still be places with natural snow in the Alps, so higher altitude resorts can survive. The concern is how expensive and elitist they can become.”

Small amounts of snowmaking will help keep some resorts going, he said, especially those at lower elevations. But snowmaking at scale will never be able to replace real snow, as it is too expensive and uses too much energy and water.

According to the most recent study, using snowmaking to achieve 50% snow cover on pistes reduces the number of European resorts at high risk of snow cover loss to 27% at 2C and 71% at 4C.

Although the same study shows that emissions from snowmaking are small, artificial snow use at a scale of just 2% of overall resort emissions creates problems in energy and water use.

A study by the University of Basel found resorts located below 1,800 to 2,000 meters will have to abandon their lower slopes and increasingly rely on artificial snow just to keep their higher slopes open.

The impact of artificial snow use for up to 100 consecutive days will increase water consumption by approximately 540m liters of water and pit resorts against local communities due to competition over water use.

In the French Alps, water consumption could increase ninefold by 2100 due to this reliance on artificial snow, according to the study.

The federation said that only by using carbon offsets would it be possible to meet the 1.5c target of the Paris Agreement; and it created the FIS Rainforest Initiative to do just that.

So while some are pushing for the industry to do more to adapt to keep the sport alive, others are working to embrace a new future rather than concentrating everything on one sport.

In Morzine, the non-profit sustainability Montagne Verte group works at grassroots level to support a move to a low-carbon future in the area.

Cécile Burton, general manager of Montagne Verte, said: “Temperatures in the Alps are rising by more than twice the world average and this is not good news for an industry that depends on snow.

“Our approach is to focus on four-season tourism in the valley and to make the valley and mountains somewhere you can live all year round.

“There is life after skiing, but we have to adapt and we have to imagine what our future will look like. It’s an area where you can climb, mountain bike, hike, or just be around and it’s all year round.

“We need to place more value in other times of the year, not just from an environmental and sustainability perspective, but from a human perspective, because for somewhere to be a place that you can live in all year round, you have to have a year-round job.”

As well as working to imagine and support a new future, the collective works with local politicians and the industry to promote policies that reduce emissions.

Most emissions from skiing come from tourist flights to resorts, car travel in resorts and energy used in accommodation, so Montagne Verte is working to persuade politicians and businesses to move to car-free resorts.

The group recently took eight local mayors to the car-free resort of Zermatt Switzerland to investigate whether Morzine can follow where that resort led.

The group also managed to encourage 100 businesses to become part of an Alpine express pass which offers discounts on snow passes, ski guides, spa massages and yoga to people traveling by train to their holiday.

Al Judge, president of the luxury chalet vacation company AliKats try to adjust for the day when the snow stops.

“We want to shift the focus of our season from winter skiing,” Judge said. “Summer is our second biggest season, but we’re trying to focus on getting stronger demand for spring and fall vacations, so when the snow stops, we’ve adjusted to become a four-season, year-round business .”