OXFORD CLIMATE SOCIETY
  • About
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • Our History
    • Advisory Board
    • Our Sponsors
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Videos of Past Events
  • Education
    • The Oxford School of Climate Change
    • Capstone Projects
    • Climate Change and Policy Lecture series
    • COP information
    • Climate Library
  • Action
    • Sustainability Action Guide
    • Decarbonise Oxford
    • College Sustainability Workshops
    • Legacy Campaigns >
      • Sustainability in the Curriculum
      • Oxford Climate Action Plan
  • Media and Arts
    • RISE zine
    • Anthroposphere: The Oxford Climate Review
    • Interdiscplinary Fine Art
  • Blog
    • Articles >
      • International Climate Policy
      • Global Perspectives
      • What you need to know about...
      • Past Blogs
    • Event summaries
  • Get Involved
    • Join Our Teams
    • RISE Submissions
    • Subscribe to our Newsletter
  • Alumni Network
  • Contact
  • Donate

Past Blogs

A variety of blog posts

Dropping the skis: The impact of Winter Sports

2/3/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture

Author

Harry Holmes

Many people reading this article will have been inundated with information about the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. You may have seen the crashes, the successes and felt offended by how sporty people our age can be. In and amongst this you may or may not have noticed that the UK does rather poorly in the Winter Olympics compared to our summer performances. I’m glad we suck.
If the UK was good at winter sports people might get the crazy idea to take up one of them and go on holidays in the mountains. The impact of this would be huge, as I’m about to argue. Now, a brief interlude for disclosure before I get to my point, I have been on ski holidays, I rather enjoy the sport and understand why people go to hit the slopes. I am not someone who wishes to shame those who do winter sports, but maybe it’s time to make your next ski holiday your last.

Getting there is the first environmental problem. Many people will fly to a ski holiday in continental Europe, in particular the Alps. A quick search on carbon calculators will tell you a direct economy return flight from London to Geneva will release 0.24 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. You may say, I’m not going to fly, I’ll take a coach or car the 728 miles driving distance it is to the French Alps from London. A coach would only produce 0.06 tonnes of CO₂ for this journey, but a medium petrol car will produce more emissions than a plane at 0.48 tonnes for the round trip. The Carbon Trust has estimated individuals produce nearly 11 tonnes of CO₂ a year and that this figure needs to be reduced by a significant degree to reduce global warming. None of these figures are meant to be authoritative, but clearly cutting out the travel to ski holidays in Europe, never mind further afield, has a significant impact on personal emissions.

“Okay,” you say, “I will travel by coach and offset” or “my impact is already much lower, so I can afford to emit here” but stop, emissions from the travel are not the only environmental impact of winter sports. There is a huge biodiversity impact of winter resorts, in the form of the razing of trees and plants to make way for slopes. Alongside this you have the loss of forest habitats for animals which lived within them, and the impact the loud and disruptive resort has on animal welfare. Even in Scottish ski slopes, where the emissions from UK travellers are clearly their lowest, they have seen declines in animal populations at least partly attributable to the development of winter sports resorts.

Finally, you have the resource usage by such resorts. With amounts of snow reducing and becoming increasingly irregular, the reliance on artificial snow is growing. Thousands of gallons of water per minute are needed to ensure this amount of snow can be produced, an unacceptable usage considering the increasing scarcity of water. The use of energy to run ski lifts and power the hotels is incredibly high and the emissions from slope maintenance vehicles are high due to their heavy-duty nature. In short, these locations are resource black holes.

Now, you may turn to me and point to all the resorts using renewable energy, or conservation measures and tell me that it is improving. In fact a brief search online will show a lot of such endeavours. But that assumes that the activity is something we need, that being shipped halfway up a slope to go down it again is somehow a necessity. Whether the impact is increasing or decreasing, it ignores the fact that increased reliance on winter sports as a holiday activity is an unnecessary luxury.

So what now? Again, this isn’t intended to be an attack on those that partake in the sport, many students of this university and others organise such trips, but a call for thought. A call to refuse to partake in an industry that causes so much environmental damage when alternative holidays are possible. Next time you are tempted to take part in a winter sports trip, stop and think, “Is it worth it?”
2 Comments
Sam
2/3/2018 03:35:39 pm

Interesting read. But I would make a case and ask the question of what proportion of the flights are exactly carrying the people going in and out of the ski resort regions in Europe? Surely a much greater proportion of the flights are people travelling to other destinations for other purposes and by the same logic, those should also be discouraged.

Or are we looking at the wrong place to cut down emissions? What about the farming and manufacturing industry? How much water are those industries using up?

Reply
best essay writing services link
10/3/2018 05:45:00 am

This article made me realize the negative effects of winter sports. Recently, there was a winter olympics held at Busan, South Korea. It was a good thing for the said country because it obviously helped their tourism industry. But just like what you said, it's hazardous for our environment for a lot of reasons. I am not sure if it has ended already, but I think that the place has to rest. If the organizers are planning to hold one more Winter Olympics next year, it should be in a different place already.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    OCS Media Team

    The latest in climate science, policy, perspectives and more from the OCS team.

    Archives

    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017

    Categories

    All
    Adaptation
    BEIS
    Climate Justice
    Communication
    COP23
    COP24
    COP26
    Coronavirus
    DEFRA
    Eco Guide
    Economics
    Event Summary
    Extreme Weather
    Food
    Food Reviews
    Fossil Fuels
    Gender
    Global Perspectives
    Government
    Impacts
    International
    Local
    Nature
    Oceans
    Plastic
    Policy
    Pollution
    Race
    Solutions
    UK
    UNFCCC
    USA
    Women And Climate Change

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • About
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • Our History
    • Advisory Board
    • Our Sponsors
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Videos of Past Events
  • Education
    • The Oxford School of Climate Change
    • Capstone Projects
    • Climate Change and Policy Lecture series
    • COP information
    • Climate Library
  • Action
    • Sustainability Action Guide
    • Decarbonise Oxford
    • College Sustainability Workshops
    • Legacy Campaigns >
      • Sustainability in the Curriculum
      • Oxford Climate Action Plan
  • Media and Arts
    • RISE zine
    • Anthroposphere: The Oxford Climate Review
    • Interdiscplinary Fine Art
  • Blog
    • Articles >
      • International Climate Policy
      • Global Perspectives
      • What you need to know about...
      • Past Blogs
    • Event summaries
  • Get Involved
    • Join Our Teams
    • RISE Submissions
    • Subscribe to our Newsletter
  • Alumni Network
  • Contact
  • Donate