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And why your bathroom needs a recycling bin.
Dear Reader,
In the fall of 1986, when Dot attended a school in France, classmates and I rented a car with a hastily conceived plan to drive to Switzerland to ski. The trip was harrowing. At one point, we had to stop in a small village and have chains installed on our tires to reduce the risk of sliding off the icy roads that edged northern Italian mountains. We collectively exhaled in relief when we arrived at Verbier 4 Vallées in one piece.
Our jubilation was quickly quashed. This storied Swiss ski resort was … snowless. Well, not completely, but enough that the British Ski Team (with whom we shared a pint or two in a pub) was being sent home the next day.
The next day on the slopes, we skied around rocks protruding from a thin layer of snow and ice. Dodging such hazards as we whizzed downhill felt at least as death-defying as our drive.
At the time, a snowless winter in Switzerland seemed inconceivable. But, with the Winter Olympic Games closing yesterday, it’s worth considering the growing challenge of hosting winter sports on a warming planet.
A number of researchers have been doing exactly that, coming up with potential solutions to keep the Games going, including limiting host cities to just over a handful of “climate-reliable” countries, or moving the Games up by two or three weeks.
After all, of 93 mountain locations with the infrastructure to host Olympic winter games, just 52 are expected to have the necessary snow depth and frigid temps by the 2050s. This year’s host city, Cortina, Italy, has warmed 3.6°C since it last hosted the games in 1956.
While Dot loves cheering for winter Olympics athletes, what I'd really cheer for would be a worldwide commitment to slowing global warming. Let’s join forces with others to make it happen with Protect Our Winters.
Athletically,
Dot
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