Ruth Carruthers: The importance of stories
Ruth Carruthers’ gets a healthy reminder that remembering the good ol’ days could help protect our future.
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There are 150 ski resorts in Slovakia. I had no idea the country was so lucky, until I talked to Prof. Milan Lapin, an internationally respected climatologist and avid skier who has lived in Slovakia all his life, and with 150 ski resorts it’s no wonder he settled there. But skiing wasn’t always reserved for the mountains he explains: “I enjoyed endless winters of cross-country skiing as a boy, but there is never enough snow to do that now, and I can only take my grandchildren skiing high up in the mountains.”
It doesn’t sound so bad, until you realise that most of the snow in these resorts is often fake, with up to 80% of available snow now being shot from a cannon. The reason for a decrease in snow fall Lapin believes is climate change, of course, which is only set to make the problem worse. Sure, fake snow may mean we can still enjoy snow sports, but it’s hardly a sustainable solution, since fake snow production is energy hungry and only exacerbates the situation further.
Prof. Lapin is a pretty old guy, I don’t know how old, but old enough to remember better days, and to have lived through the industrial revolution, and come out the other end into a world that is spiralling out of control. Which means Lapin and his generation are extra important, because they provide us with reference to a once sustainable world that we need to get back to.
I am fascinated by the stories that older people have to tell because they are like a core sample through time. But what worries me is that when this generation leaves us we will loose that reference point, and no one will remember that you could once go cross-country skiing across Slovakia. That’s why stories are important.
I’m not naive enough to think that stories are going to save the planet, but without them people will only remember a time when a warming planet was the norm and fake snow was an acceptable substitute for the real thing.
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The importance of stories (text) by Ruth Carruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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