For some time now, a strange feeling has been developing among Austrian boardsport enthusiasts: the ski shame, or the shame of skiing, linked to climate change. Increasingly widespread, it nevertheless remains a taboo, a bit like “hemorrhoids”.
It’s a subject that Austrians only talk about in veiled terms, a bit like “hemorrhoids” when they are going to be examined “at the doctor”, dares the Austrian conservative daily The press. In Austria and elsewhere, winter sports have become synonymous with “shame”, but a very particular shame, which is designated in German by the neologism “ski shame”.
Comparable to “Flight shame” Swedish, this feeling of guilt that you feel when you take a big polluting plane to go on vacation, the ski shame also relates to climate issues. The neologism is composed of the word “Ski” and of “Scham”, “a term itself derived from the Germanic root ‘Skamo’, which meant ‘shame’ or ‘dishonor’”.
He therefore alludes to this “kind of shame” that skiers develop when they think “to the climate, to the snow cannons [et à leur empreinte sur les écosystèmes]with white bands of artificial snow in a predominantly green-brown landscape”.
The spectrum of Ischgl
But the environmental arguments against winter sports are not the only ones to fly. In Austria, a country that is nevertheless very attached to this type of activity, skiing has not had such a good reputation since the fiasco of Ischgl, in 2020. The Austrian resort had at the time been one of the first centers of major contamination of Covid-19 in Europe. Numerous collective and individual complaints against the country’s authorities have since been launched, and the reputation of the high mountain towns has deteriorated considerably.
Instead of saying that they are into winter sports, Austrian holidaymakers therefore use vague terms. “Big kisses from the mountain”, “We are in a chalet” : periphrases abound. “Of course, we know immediately what it is”, precise The press. But, as with hemorrhoids, we prefer that it stays between us.
Source
Created in 1848, close to industrial circles and the Popular Party (ÖVP, Christian-conservative): here is the “elite newspaper”, as he calls himself. This quality journal took its current form in the 1960s.
[…]
Read more