Green or obscene? Just how eco-friendly can a ski resort be?
Global warming is fucking up our winters. Fact. In face of this slowly dawning catastrophe, alpine resorts are desperately looking for ways to be more at one with Mother Earth.
One such resort is Falls Creek in the Australian Alps. In 2005, it became the first alpine resort to be awarded the Green Globe – a benchmark for the travel industry in ecological awareness and sustainable tourist programmes – for its below-average energy and water consumption, waste management and vehicle restrictions, as well as the village itself being a plastic bag-free zone.
Not content with the accolade, it has since been upping its green credentials by using 100 per cent renewable energy to power three of its lifts, as well as installing snow fencing and twenty new energy-efficient snow cannons to help preserve what’s left of the dwindling snowfall.
Not to be outdone by such carbon showboating, other resorts throughout the world are jumping on the eco-bandwagon. Val d’Isere in France has recently announced that it will be going car-free - joining Zermatt in Switzerland - and the Colorado resort of Vail is set to build a $1billion 'green' village fully equipped with subtly painted lifts, ‘energy efficient’ snowmaking and wildlife ‘corridors’ — all to be powered by wind. You can almost hear the grizzly bears breathing a sigh of relief.
But is this really the answer? Surely environmentally friendly development is an oxymoron in itself as, ultimately, development is the antithesis of conservation? If so, it may be time the industry faces up to the fact that rampant development and floods of tourists are not compatible with the preservation of these beautiful yet fragile ecosystems. And, let’s fucking face it, no amount of snow cannons and bio-diesel is ever gonna change that.
This story originally appeared in Huck #008.
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