2023-10-22 20:00:31
Innsbruck (OTS) – In Austria, environmental protection usually consists of one group telling the other what they should do best to combat global warming. Seen this way, the discussion regarding skiing is an insufficient one.
The same discussion comes up every fall. Is skiing too expensive and do you start the season too early? Every year we throw arguments at each other, and maybe sometimes we listen to each other. But mostly it remains black and white: here the environmentalists, there the evil tourism experts and at the end of the discussion the fronts run along the same fault lines as in the previous year.
These are the ideal conditions for repetition, but not for progress. One such approach would be for everyone to create their own personal carbon footprint and see what the bottom line is. Environmental protection in Austria usually consists of one group telling the other what they should do best to combat global warming. If something doesn’t fit into the black and white narrative, taking action is often not far off. The glaciologist Andrea Fischer had to be asked whether she was now the PR spokeswoman for the Gletscherbahnen. Fischer had dared to say that it was not skiing itself or the start of the World Cup in Sölden that was causing the glaciers to melt, but rather global warming itself. Everyone who travels to major events by car contributes to this. However, this applies to the start of the Ski World Cup as well as to the pop concert or the football match in the Ernst Happel Stadium.
This is the point where environmental protection becomes uncomfortable because it suggests doing without. The discussion regarding slowed growth is also a discussion regarding our lifestyles and concepts of freedom. And because this is inconvenient, the next question comes up: Why try to slow down growth to protect the climate instead of tackling climate protection directly?
So the climate protection debate goes in circles. No political project is so unlucrative for the politicians involved. Impose restrictions locally or nationally in order to achieve a supposedly global effect? The Greens found out how well this was received with the heating law in Germany. Their example was so off-putting to the Austrian government that the exchange of heating systems in this country ended up being voluntary from the outset and a renewable heat bill was light.
What remains is the individual who can still ask himself what he is now willing to contribute to climate protection. Creating a personal carbon footprint might be the first small step. Before the index finger is raised and points in a different direction, just not your own.
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