Winter Olympics and Climate Change
As the 2026 Winter Olympic Games begin in Milano–Cortina, it is time to lift our eyes from the medal competitions and look instead at the logistical and ecological wreckage behind the slopes. Back in 2014, the climate modeling work our team at iklimBU conducted during the Lillehammer 2022 candidacy process had already placed these cold realities—now largely ignored by the sports world—squarely on the table. The Winter Olympics increasingly resemble not a celebration of sport, but a logistical war against nature fought with technology — and one that is already lost in advance. Over the past half-century, the clear shortening of winter across the Northern Hemisphere and the melting of snowpacks in mountainous regions have steadily narrowed the geographical boundaries within which the Games can be organized, trapping us in a dangerous form of technological optimism. Artificial snow, embraced by Olympic committees and broadcasters to preserve the illusion of a white winter landscape, is i...