WASHINGTON POST • March 5, 2022
There are few places where climate change is as tangible as in the Alps; Europe’s largest mountain range has been warming at twice the global average. Snow has become scarcer, and glaciers are receding dramatically. Conditions during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and four years later in Sochi, Russia, were “too warm for even advanced snowmaking technology,” so snow had to be trucked or flown in from elsewhere. This year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing the snow that skiers and snowboarders competed on was not natural, either. The Alpine competitions are held in the brown mountains around Zhangjiakou. It might be a glimpse into the future. Previous host cities already belong to the fastest-warming locations worldwide, and if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t dramatically reduced, 20 of the 21 destinations that have previously hosted the Winter Olympics wouldn’t be able to do so by the end of the century.