You would think that with COP26 putting carbon emissions at the top of the global agenda, the ski industry would pull together on this vital issue.

Yet one ski website is apparently reluctant to accept the facts.

‘Train travel is perhaps better for the planet’

According to this article, the author believes that train travel is ‘perhaps better for the planet’ [my italics].

The article also refers to the Travelski Express service:

‘It’s [sic] Eurostar charter takes people from St Pancras in London to the Tarentaise at a claimed “fraction of the cost to the environment.”

Facts, not opinions

These aren’t matters of opinion, they are facts that are widely available.

If you accept the climate science – as assessed by the IPCC and the 195 nations that signed the Paris Agreement – emissions must be reduced by 2030.

The facts are that train travel is better for the planet than flying and that climate change is an existential thread to the ski industry.

Tagskryt, not Flygskam

At Ski Flight Free, we do not believe in ‘Flygskam’ (‘flight shame’ in Swedish). Travelling by train doesn’t work for everyone.

What we are trying to do is to encourage more people to choose to travel by train when they take their ski holidays, and so reduce the emissions associated with those holidays. ‘Tagskryt’ – pride in travelling by train – is the emotion we are interested in.

Even small shifts in behaviour away from flying can be significant.

“Greener, more fuel-efficient modes of transport are the future”

While the title of this article is ‘A Greener Way to Get to the Alps’, the use of misleading phraseology such as this does not help public perception. It suggests it is debatable that train travel has fewer emissions than flying.

As Greg Dickinson recently wrote in The Telegraph, you don’t have to feel guilty about travelling, but that:

“anybody with a grain of sense will recognise that greener, more fuel-efficient modes of transport are the future.”

——-

Ski Flight Free contacted the website on multiple occasions asking for the article to be amended, but received no reply.