Sound the alarm about THIS
In much the same way that it’s hard to be both an aeroplane pilot and a flat earther, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be both a skier and a climate change denier. Given the shocking capacity for human stupidity, however, both are possible.
In any case, for skiers who are also climate change deniers, who also happen to favour the Swiss resort of Rüschegg Eywald, so perfect and idyllic for the sport it’s sometimes referred to as “Little Grindelwald,” you’re going to have to find some other explanation for why you didn’t ski there this winter. For the first time in the resort’s 55 year history it didn’t open this winter. Not once.
Last year wasn’t a lot better. The lift was open for just four days. The year 2022 was a little better still, but not much. These days you can still get in a little “après ski,” just without the skiing.
Merely to meet the cost of overhead requires the resort to open at least 10 to 15 days per season. Rüschegg’s costly “piste basher,” a tracked vehicle equipped in front with a shovel used to groom the snow, sits unused and gathering dust in a shed. It’s no surprise that the voguish and once popular resort is on the edge of bankruptcy. No doubt the local plaster of paris industry, used to make plaster casts for broken bones, isn’t faring much better.
When it first opened in 1969, sizable crowds gathered at the base of the ski lift in Rüschegg. “Back then people had big ideas,” Rüschegg’s mayor, Markus Hirschi, recollects. “Calling it Little Grindelwald, people bought shares in the lift, they thought, ‘Yes, here’s a thriving resort.’ Thinking about it now — it’s quite emotional.”
Sad though this state of affairs is for the little village, it doesn’t represent anything like the compelling human tragedy it could become. What it does represent, however, is yet another of the thousands of micro-inconveniences and disappointments that are becoming more and more common worldwide. White Christmases are disappearing (the last one here in the south of England I recall was my first, in 2001). Lakes and rivers are drying up. Warm summer holiday spots are becoming a little too warm. Regions known for seasonable climates are becoming increasingly windy and unpleasant.
These are the harbingers of much worse to come. Left unchecked, these small inconveniences for the more affluent will seem like fond memories. Climate change is coming to the world of the rich, the skiers, the boaters, the golfers and the paragliders. No one and no thing is safe.
It’s the same everywhere now for Swiss ski resorts. Soon they will become relics of a squandered past. I suppose the rich can go to Mars and try to forge a paradise from a barren planet. But maybe, just maybe, they can help to save the planet they have before it’s too late. Call me crazy, but I happen to think that’s the better way. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.