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A brilliantly Swiss scheme to
ignore global warming
Magnus Linklater is aghast at pig-headed frivolity
on the Matterhorn
Magnus Linklater
Editor: The Times (Scottish Edition)
Filed 19 Jul 07
©Magnus Linklater
This article was originally
published in T|he Times, 18th July 07.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and
the newspaper
On a clear day, beneath the slopes of the
Matterhorn, you can see for yourself the retreat of the alpine glacier
– the most vivid example I know of global warming in action.
My map of the area, published seven years ago, shows the ice sweeping
down the whole north face of the mountain. Today the glacier has
shrunk to half its size. In another seven years, say locals, the
great wall of ice that, in 1861, prompted the Victorian mountaineer
Edward Whymper to describe the “terror of its invincible appearance”
could well have disappeared altogether.
It is not the only example. Along the Haute
Route, which runs from Chamonix to Zermatt, we saw whole valleys,
scoured and black, littered with the debris of broken rocks, left
in their wake by steadily melting glaciers.
You might imagine, therefore, that the Swiss,
for whom the mountains are the very soul of the country, would be
impassioned in their defence of the environment. That combination
of stern efficiency and national diligence which ensures that their
trains run silently and on time, their streets are swept clean and
even their mountain paths are carefully mowed, must surely place
Switzerland in the forefront of the campaign to cut carbon emissions.
You would be wrong. High on the slopes above
Zermatt, we came upon evidence that, even here, the defence of a
profitable tourist industry takes precedence over the need to protect
the natural environment. In the midst of a complex network of brilliantly
engineered hydroelectric systems, designed to keep the towns and
villages of the southern Alps supplied with power, stood row upon
row of brand new snowmaking machines, ready for the next skiing
season. Sometime in late autumn they will be transported to the
fashionable ski resorts of Verbier, Zermatt and the rest, where
early snow is desperately short, and used to manufacture a few more
hectares of the white stuff so that this year’s tourists can
be gulled for one more year at least into imagining that global
warming is just an illusion and that the slopes will forever remain
glistening and pure.
Snowmaking facilities need about 20 billion
gallons of water per year
As an example of chronic and pig-headed
frivolity, the snow machine has a lot to answer for. It is wasteful,
energy-inefficient and environmentally indefensible. A single ski
resort needs as much electricity as a small village just to keep
its snowmaking systems going, and they are insatiable consumers
of water. To cover one hectare (or 2.5 acres) of a snow slope, which
may last less than a day, a snowmaking system needs 880 gallons
of water; to cover all of the slopes in the Alps that have artificial
snowmaking facilities, the annual demand has been estimated at 20
billion gallons of water, or enough to satisfy the needs of a city
of 1.5 million inhabitants. Because alpine resorts are, despite
their icy surroundings, often short of water, these precious supplies
must either be stored on site or ferried up by helicopter. The Swiss,
veteran users of airborne travel, favour the latter. The French
dig reservoirs. The Austrians do both.
It would be hard to conjure up a more potent
symbol of environmental perversity than the use of carbon-spewing
fossil fuels to help to dispose of millions of gallons of carefully
extracted water in order that a few thousand tourists can slide
down a slope for an extra week. The OECD, which has been monitoring
the skiing industry, last year produced a dry but devastating report
entitled Climate Change in the European Alps, from which these figures
are extracted. Its editor, Shardul Agrawala, is diplomatic, but
firm, in his conclusions. “It is critically important to factor
in the[se] environmental implications, and not just operational
costs, in making decisions about artificial snowmaking,” he
said.
Stuff the skiers, sink the canoeists, gag the bird-lovers:
this is a battle for survival
This is, as you may suspect, more than simply
an alpine issue. For some reason, sport, leisure, wildlife and the
general pursuit of happiness remain impenetrable barriers to perfectly
sensible attempts to introduce alternative sources of energy and
stem the ravages of climate change. In Scotland, the expansion of
the wind farm industry has been slowed and often halted by objections
that range from complaints that too many pylons spoil the view to
suggestions that the occasional absent-minded hawk might collide
with a propeller. In Perthshire, where the inhabitants of Dunkeld
are proposing an energy-efficient and well-landscaped hydroelectric
scheme on the River Braan, the plans have been thrown out by the
National Environment Agency because the river is used by a few dozen
canoeists every year.
Yet if we take the warnings about climate
change with any degree of seriousness, we have to change our terms
of reference. Instead of hailing the inventiveness of the ski resort
that makes its own snow, we should accept the harsh reality that
nature has terminally curtailed the skiing season. Much as we cherish
our birds of prey, we should remember that their prospects of survival
are threatened not so much by a freak collision as by the three-degree
rise in global temperatures that will occur in the next 50 years
if we do not manage to wean ourselves off a reliance on oil and
gas. Stuff the skiers, sink the canoeists, gag the bird-lovers;
this is a battle for survival, not an exercise in self-indulgence.
And, since you ask, no, I am not cancelling
my next skiing trip. But I intend to go where the snow is actually
snow rather than nucleated water forced out under pressure through
an atomising nozzle, and the hiss of the skis is not drowned out
by the ugly growl of some alien machine trying to persuade me that,
even though the glacier is melting and the ice is retreating everywhere
else, here we can still pretend that we are living in the time-warped
artifice of a winter wonderland.
©Magnus Linklater
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