For generations the Alps, Europe's winter playground of mighty peaks and stunning scenery, have been visited by millions every year. But with climate change taking a grip on the continent, the mountain range is set to become a battleground between developers and conservationists.
On one side, businesses are preparing to build a new generation of ski resorts among the highest peaks and glaciers. They say global warming poses such a threat that they can only save the sport by going upward. Their proposals, revealed last week, include plans for resorts in France and Austria at above 3,350 meters.
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On the other side stand the green activists, infuriated by what they see as an assault on the Alps' last natural habitats. They have pledged to fight the developers to the last.
"The skiing industry has become the cancer of the Alps," said Aurelian Daodrey of French ecology campaigners Mountain Wilderness. "We have got to start regulating and controlling these things. This is our last chance."
The battle promises to be bitter, although both sides do agree about the cause -- global warming. With soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other industrial gases causing atmospheric temperatures to rise, developers and tourism are under growing pressure.
Many of the Alps' most popular resorts lie at relatively low altitudes: Kitzbuhel in Austria at 760m, Gstaad in Switzerland at 1,050m, Morzine and Megeve in France at 1,000 and 1,100m. They are in danger of running out of snow as the world warms up.
Although the Alps enjoyed excellent snow last year, meteorologists say climate change is destined to take its toll. In a recent report, the UN Environmental Program said that in three decades the snowline in the Alps will rise by 300m. Resorts in some areas of France, Austria and Switzerland will simply dry up.
Other areas will suffer avalanches, landslides and floods triggered by snow melts higher up mountainsides. Half of all resorts in Europe may have to close within the next 50 years, it concluded. This year one resort in Scotland, Glencoe, was only saved from closure at the last minute.
"I get many calls from people asking my advice about buying ski chalets," said Peter Hardy, editor of the Good Skiing and Snowboarding Guide. "My answer is always the same; don't get one that is in a low-lying resort. In a few years, you will end up staring at grassy fields instead of pure white pistes."
This prospect is now causing serious alarm among Alpine nations, which fear they could lose billions of euros in income. Millions visit the Alps in winter and hundreds of thousands depend on the sport for their livelihood. Without skiing, Austria could lose 5 percent of its gross national product, for example. The other leading ski nations, France and Italy, are equally vulnerable, while the UN report Climate Change and Winter Sports estimates Switzerland's losses could reach a billion pounds a year.
Politicians throughout the Alps are now being pressed by business to relax environmental regulations that might block new developments.
This applies in particular to the higher, colder parts of the Alps. Earlier this year, the local government of the Tyrol, one of the most threatened regions, lifted bans on construction of ski lifts in high regions and on glaciers, even in part of a protected landscape linked to other countries.
Developers are preparing to exploit this relaxation with two major projects. One, at Kaunertal, would open up the Gepatsch in Austria, the second-largest glacier in the eastern Alps, and allow tourists to ski at more than 3,500m. The second, also in Austria at Mittelbergferner, would include building cable cars and new pistes at Fernerkogel, and new lifts and runs that would join Pitztal and Otztal. Again, very high land would be opened up for tourism.
The prospect of these developments gaining approval angers environmental groups.
"Driving skiers higher and higher is the worst strategy if you want ecologically sound winter tourism," Peter Hasslacher, a development planner for the Austrian Alpine Club, told the science journal Nature.
"It is just the wrong way to tackle this issue," said Michel Revaz of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA), an umbrella conservation group whose members include the WWF, green groups and climbing organizations such as the Austrian Alpine Club.
"These glaciers are the last pure places in the Alps," he said. "They are bodies of pristine solid water and should not be polluted with fuel, and oil, and debris."
CIPRA officials say that moving up a mountain to avoid the inexorable rise of the Alpine snowline shows a lack of imagination.
They also warn that plans to link existing resorts by extending pistes and lifts so vacationers can ski from resort to resort are increasing pressure on the environment. For example, the Espace Cristal that links several resorts in France is being expanded to include places such as Megeve and has aroused the fury of groups like Mountain Wilderness.
Conservationists want other forms of tourism such as hiking, sledding and climbing to be promoted in existing resorts, an idea that generates little favor.
"It may sound a good idea," said Chris Gill, editor of the Where to Ski and Snowboard Guide. "But it will not satisfy the millions of people who come to the Alps every winter for one thing: to ski downhill as fast as they can."
For this reason, projects for the construction of higher and higher resorts continue to be promoted.
"Intrawest, the construction company, refused to consider anything other than a very high-level resort, in this case, Les Arcs 1950," Hardy said. "It no longer makes commercial sense to invest millions in building a resort in the French Alps at any lower level."
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