Despite the mild weather with rain and thaw, Bavaria’s Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger does not see the ski season in the Bavarian Alps in danger. “Thanks to investments in modern, energy-saving cable cars and targeted snowmaking, Bavaria has had a dream start to the winter sports season,” said the head of the Free Voters of the German Press Agency in Munich. Millions of Bavarian skiers could thus experience sport and relaxation from everyday life with their children close to home during the Christmas holidays, “without long, fuel-guzzling journeys to foreign ski areas”.
Despite the thaw, there were optimal skiing conditions in many places, emphasized Aiwanger, who is also responsible for tourism. In the classic Bavarian winter sports resorts such as Oberstdorf, Garmisch, Ofterschwang, on the Spitzingsee, on the Sudelfeld or in Balderschwang, the technical snowmaking is mainly done with green electricity.
Around a third of winter sales are generated in the ski areas during this time. “This year’s income was secured by technical snowmaking, as well as many jobs in hotels, in gastronomy, in local retail et cetera.” In this respect, “the constant nagging of climate extremists and Greens” against the Bavarian cable car funding program and technical snowmaking has once again proven to be wrong. “I would like all Green voters who go skiing to send the Green Party officials a postcard so that they finally give up their false position of ideological fun-mongering.”
Aiwanger also does not accept the accusation that artificial snow is harmful to the environment: “The rainwater is simply collected in retention basins and then blown onto the slopes in frozen form as artificial snow at the beginning of the ski season, which even protects the plants underneath from frost the artificial ice the blossoms of the fruit trees.” After the winter, the artificial snow melts again and the water seeps away. “Anyone who sees this as an unreasonable burden on the environment can no longer be helped.”