CO2-Fußabdruck

Today, we are not so much concerned with the future as with the past when it comes to Snow of Tomorrow. The French oil and gas company Total is the fourth largest player on the market after ExxonMobil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell. Total's management was demonstrably aware of the negative effects of burning fossil fuels on the climate over 50 years ago.

About 20 years ago, as a young boy, I stood on the Aiguille du Midi in France for the first time with my parents. Without any effort, I climbed to an altitude of 3842m to stand like an astronaut in the face of a rugged, high alpine landscape. Impressed then as I am now, I ask myself whether it is essential for people to be able to reach otherwise almost inaccessible places so easily.

Hikers, mountaineers and ski tourers - all genders are addressed equally with these terms - are actually considered nature-loving and ecologically oriented contemporaries: they seek freedom, exercise and nature away from large tourist centers. However, their travel behavior is neither nature-loving nor ecological, as most of them travel to the mountains by car.

It's getting cold outside, even in the previously barren northern Alps there is now at least some snow in most of the valleys and in the pedestrian zones of the world there are sometimes more, sometimes less tasteful Christmas lights. All of this is an unmistakable sign that Christmas, the end of the year and a new winter are on the horizon.

Of course, we have the first moving images of the Southern Alps on offer. But we are mainly dedicated to the new generation of professional freeriders who seem to run their own YouTube channels. After all, are the days of big productions over? Do freeride pros now have to film and market themselves? Is switch skiing, backflips and drinking beer no longer enough? As an encore, there is also a WDR documentary about "Skiing in Afghanistan, the Olympics and St. Moritz".

"Your posts are constantly encouraging people to go powdering all over the world. What's the point! I think it's fatal in view of the ecological consequences." We are always happy to receive reader feedback, even if it is critical, like this message that Roman recently wrote to us. If a Facebook message then turns into a meaningful discussion and an entire article, we are all the more pleased. PG reader Roman Bonderer criticizes the contradictory (travel) behaviour of many winter sports enthusiasts: