‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps? With the snow line edging higher, 186 French ski resorts have shut, while global heating threatens dozens more.

Objective should be to stop the receding snowline and bring the snow line back down again, not to rekindle a ski industry, but for the sake of all humans. If ski resorts are going bust, the objective should not be to regain snow to restart a transport heavy and pollution heavy industry (air travel to reach them, high hydrocarbon demand on resort transport and hotel services, high disposable culture within resorts) but to rebalance the natural environment.

Human greed tends to mean that the polluting industry dependent on snow is also leading to snow loss. If snow does return, I can only see the return of ski package holidays as the thing that’ll then destroy the snow….again. Snow simply won’t recover.

There are huge atmospheric polluting industries that should be curbed to address this, but we shouldn’t focus on the loss of the ski industry; focus should be the regulation, decarbonisation and reduction of drivers of climate change. The snow line is the canary in the cage.