The World Alpine Ski Championship in Courchevel and Méribel this week provided plenty of thrills and surprises, including a first-ever medal for Greece when AJ Ginnis took an unexpected silver in the men’s slalom. Yet perhaps the biggest victory was simply that there was enough snow. Several other competitive events have been cancelled or curtailed due to a lack of snowfall in recent months, while the press has been full of stories about the warm winter leaving many resorts with patchy snow and forced some pistes to close altogether.
The threat of climate change is the last thing the sector needs while it recovers from the lockdowns that wiped out much of the ski season over the past two years. Yet that’s exactly what it faces. “Study after study has predicted a future of dwindling snowfalls, melting glaciers and shortening winter seasons,” says Tom Robbins in the Financial Times. “Under the worst-case scenario, 95% of Alpine glaciers are predicted
