MONTE CIMONE: Monte Cimone, a well-known ski resort in the Apennine Mountains in Italy, before the winter season, had invested a huge amount of 5 million euros in artificial snowmaking to combat the effects of global warming. However, much of the money was wasted.
The snow cannon proved ineffective because the water droplets they fired into the air needed freezing weather to fall to the ground as snow. Only in mid-January, the temperature stayed below 32 Fahrenheit (zero Celsius).
According to Luciano Magnani, chairman of the regional association of ski tourism operators, “the ski lifts were closed, the seasonal workers and ski instructors had nothing to do, and we lost 40 percent of our earnings for the entire season. We were closed for the holidays for the first time in forty years.”
Globally, the skiing business is threatened by rising temperatures, but Italy is a tough hit because of its numerous relatively low-altitude resorts in the Apennines and Alps. Some 90 percent of pistes in Italy rely on artificial snow, compared with 39 percent in France, 70 percent in Austria, and 50 percent in Switzerland, according to data from the Italian Green lobby Legambiente. The repercussions threaten the environment, the local livelihoods and the economy.
Rising temperatures in Europe bring drought, and Italy needs help to afford the millions of cubic metres of water it uses yearly to make snow.
Legambiente claims that the yearly water consumption of the Alpine pistes of Italy may soon be a city of a million people, like Naples. A battery of snow cannons that keeps expanding uses a ridiculous amount of energy.
According to geologist and environmentalist Mario Tozzi, the electricity needed to make artificial snow for Europe’s Alpine resorts equals the annual consumption of 130,000 households of four.
RESIST OR CHANGE?
The skiing industry must decide whether to continue fighting in the hopes that technological advancement will help it combat the impact of rising temperatures or restructure its business model and hunt for alternate sources of visitor income. Most ski resorts refuse to follow the second recommendation by climatologists and the Bank of Italy.
According to Valeria Ghezzi, director of Italy’s association of ski-lift operators (Anef), representing 300 businesses and accounts for 90% of the market, “without skiing, the mountain communities will lose its economic underpinning, and people will flee.”
PROTESTS
Environmentalists are protesting the desperation with which the ski sector is being tried to be saved. In the Italian Apennines last month, protesters with flags and banners gathered in Pian del Poggio to oppose the installation of snow cannon at the 1,300-meter-high resort.
