Vanishing Snowfall
Growing up, I loved the Olympics. I was a competitive swimmer, with pipe dreams of reaching the highest levels of competition, so naturally I hated to miss an Olympic swimming race. I loved gymnastics, because I’d also dabbled with it, and well, doesn’t everyone love watching people defy gravity as they fly through the air? As I got a bit older, I found myself enthralled by more sports, including track and field in the summer, and downhill skiing, bobsledding, and figure skating in the winter.
As an adult, I became more attuned to many critiques of the Olympics, from how it burnishes the image of abusive autocratic host governments, to how it bans athlete protests at the podium, to the displacement of poor communities to make way for huge stadiums that often see only short-term use and the clearing of forests for arenas and ski-slopes. While I admire the athletes competing on this world stage, the event has lost a lot of its luster.
With the Winter Olympics underway in Beijing, many of these issues are on full display. The International Olympic Committee has faced heavy criticism for choosing a host country with a long record of human rights abuses — including the reported ongoing mass detention, sterilization, and torture of Uyghurs — as well as exceptional levels of public censorship. Alpine ski slopes were carved into the Songshan National Nature Reserve, home to protected golden eagles, golden leopards, and black storks. And on top of that, for the first time in history, the winter Olympics are being held without any natural snow.
The lack of snow has more than symbolic implications. Creating mountainsides of snow takes a lot of energy — think piping some 49 million gallons of water uphill, then shooting it out of hundreds of snow guns. Meanwhile, Beijing’s 21 million residents struggle with long-term water scarcity.
Scientists estimate that by 2080, only one of the previous 21 Winter Olympics cities will likely have a suitable climate to host the games.
There is a strong argument that, in many ways, losing the Games wouldn’t be a loss at all. But still, the disappearance of locales for this historical event feels like yet another reminder that without urgent intervention, warming temperatures stand to change not only our health, our safety, and our ecosystems, but our cultures as well. And the childhood super-fan in me can’t quite wrap her head around that.
Zoe Loftus-Farren
Managing Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo by: Laura Godenzi/IOC Young Reporters
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