Geopolitical fear of global warming in the Alps
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Storm clouds gathered over the Alps this week.
In Davos, Switzerland, the 53 World Economic Forum (WEF) took place under the theme “Working Together in a Fragmented World” and reflected a world “at a critical tipping point” where “the twin triggers” of COVID and Ukraine “rocked an already brittle global system”.
Sclerotic economies, the WEF continued, are “navigating with headwinds from soaring food and energy prices” amid “increased geoeconomic fragmentation, financial sector vulnerabilities including stretched asset prices and high levels of debt, and a spiraling climate crisis that could amplify any growth slowdown, especially in emerging markets.”
“Unless these systemic and interrelated risks are addressed,” the WEF concluded, “the promise of a ‘decade of action’ may turn into a decade of uncertainty and fragility.”
Meanwhile, meteorological storm clouds over many alpine ski resorts were just as likely to bring rain and no snow — and according to Monday’s New York Times, it was often too warm to even make the artificial stuff Article “Lamenting the end of endless snow in the Alps: the climate crisis is shredding mountain slopes, threatening regional industry and identity.”
Skiing, a Swiss resort director told the Times (especially in the past tense), “was something of a national sport.”
Indeed, skiers – including Americans like Mikaela Shiffrin, who could break Lindsey Vonn’s World Cup win record this weekend – are rock stars in the Alpine nations, including legends like Franz Klammer, the Austrian downhill skier who had a fine downhill run at the 1976 Innsbruck Games used to depict “the thrill of victory” in ABC’s iconic opening montage, Wide World of Sports.
And yet, Innsbruck and other Olympic-caliber Alpine resorts may not have enough snow today to host future Winter Games. Eight nations recorded their warmest January day on record this year on New Year’s Day in Europe’s ‘freaky winter’, according to data compiled by The Economist.
“The bottom line is that climate change is going to change the geography of where we can reliably host the games going forward,” he said Daniel Scott, a professor of climate and society at the University of Waterloo who has advised the International Olympic Committee on how warmer winters will affect site choices. Speaking from Canada, Scott said that “the Alps have actually been one of the most vulnerable parts of the world” and that some of the traditional European venues that may not work for future games “are what we see as winter sports powerhouses”.
Scott’s fellowship is climate science, not political science. But he sees the fragmentation reflected in Davos set back in inaction on global warming, the threat threatening the very nature of alpine resorts – and society.
Climate change “is the world’s greatest challenge to common property; the United States cannot solve it alone, China cannot, no single actor or even a small group of countries can solve this alone,” Scott said. “Even if you’re geopolitically fragmented into the West, Russia, China — spheres of influence — and others developing like the Global South, all sorts of different countries” have to be part of the solution.
And yet precisely this fragmentation increasingly defines the world – and the World Economic Forum.
“Zero Sum: The Destructive Logic Threatening Globalization” was the title of this week’s WEF cover story in The Economist (reprinted on this page 15. January). Since 1945, according to the magazine, “the world economy has operated under a system of rules and norms signed by America. This led to unprecedented economic integration that boosted growth, lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and helped the West assert itself as Soviet Russia in the Cold War. Today this system is in danger. Countries race to subsidize green energy, lure production away from friend and foe alike, and restrict the flow of goods and capital. Mutual benefit is out, national gain is in. The era of zero-sum thinking has begun.”
The magazine lists and bemoans examples, most notably one from the country it credits with underpinning globalism: the United States. In particular, it cites the Made-in-America provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which it says have “started a dangerous spiral of protectionism worldwide.” Some of this grumbling was already in whispered talks between Washington and western capitals too And there were echoes in Davos about the implications for internationalism, which could make solving transnational challenges like climate change even more daunting.
As The Economist put it: “A final concern is that the more widespread economic conflicts, the more difficult it becomes to solve problems that require global cooperation. … If countries cannot work together to address some problems, they will be impossible to solve and the world will suffer accordingly.”
the world acc Jan Bremer, president of Eurasia Group, a political risk and research consultancy, is already in a “geopolitical recession.” There is also a global premonition about an economic one. And yet Bremmer from the WEF said in an interview that the mood in Davos was “moderately optimistic compared to what you see in the headlines about the state of the world economy”.
And yet “there is tremendous concern on the geopolitical side,” he said, “with uncertainty and the realization that no one has the resources to respond. And that’s especially true with regard to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the location of the war. But it’s also true in a broader sense: this polarization that we’re seeing, the idea that the World Economic Forum is saying that fragmentation is their main concern, that is exactly the opposite of what the West is trying to achieve for everyone these years.”
What the West and the world need to do about climate change is ecologically, economically and geopolitically imperative. “Everyone understands it, everyone invests in it,” said Bremmer. “And yet the reactions are predominantly national, they are at the local, sovereign level.” Although the challenge is global, he added: “They don’t really have a global answer. How can you talk about globalization – it’s the most obvious global challenge out there – which is only met with a primarily national response?”
Klammer’s “Siegesrausch” performance captured Alpine identity perfectly, but it wasn’t the only – or even the most memorable – “Wide World of Sports” ski scene. That moment belonged to Vinko Bogataj, a ski jumper from Yugoslavia who was competing in West Germany (two Cold War-era country constructs that have evolved into today’s hot war over Ukraine).
Bogataj was as brave as Klammer but not as successful, and his wicked wipeout became the coda to the thrill of victory: “The Agony of Defeat”. It’s an outcome the Alps, let alone the world, cannot afford in view of the global cohesion needed in climate change.