Some of the world’s top winter athletes have urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to stop accepting money from the fossil fuel industry, including the Italian oil company ENI, a “Premium Partner” and official sponsor of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
“It is time to question the seemingly normal link between our sports and the products fossil-fuel companies sell,” reads a petition handed on Wednesday to IOC representatives in Milan.
The burning of oil, gas and coal drives climate change. This leads to rising winter temperatures and a reduction of the snow cover necessary for skiing, snowboarding and other winter sports. Across large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, winters are warming rapidly, which not only endangers the Olympic Games and professional sports competitions but also people and communities who economically and culturally depend on commercial skiing and other winter recreational activities.
To date the petition to the IOC has gathered more than 20,000 signatories, including Alex Hall from the United States, who won the Olympic gold medal in freestyle skiing at the 2022 Winter Games; Helvig Wessel from Norway, the Freeride World Champion 2024; and Nikolai Schirmer, also from Norway, whose nonprofit “Ski Fossil Free” organized the petition and personally delivered it to IOC representatives on February 4.
Conditions for the Winter Olympics Are Getting Worse
As of press time, neither the IOC nor ENI had commented on the petition. The IOC, however, has purchased 2.4 million cubic meters of artificial snow to ensure reliable conditions for the downhill races in Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Alps.
ENI, which had previously stated its aim to be climate neutral by 2050, announced in December that “90 percent of the fuels ENI will supply for the Games will be produced from renewable feedstocks.”
According to a new study by the scientific non-profit organization Climate Central, February temperatures in the 70 years since the first Winter Olympics in Cortina in 1956 have risen by 3.6 degrees Celsius. Cortina now has 41 fewer frost days per year than in 1956.
Worldwide, only half of the places deemed suitable for future Winter Olympics are expected to reliably maintain low temperatures by 2050, Climate Central found. “If we do nothing about human-caused climate change and the burning of fossil fuels, the possibility of hosting the Winter Olympics will literally melt away,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, one of the study’s authors.
Winter Games 2034 in Salt Lake City? Unlikely
“People in my community aren’t debating whether climate change is real or not,” said Graham Zimmerman, professional climber and spokesperson for Protect Our Winters, the nonprofit that supported the petition drive. “When we look at the mountains, it’s plainly obvious.”
Zimmerman and his team were at 7,000 meters on K2 in Pakistan, the world’s second-highest mountain, when melting snow and ice forced them to take shelter for 14 hours on a narrow rock ledge.
“At that altitude you normally put on thick clothing to stay warm,” he said. “Instead, we had to protect ourselves from avalanches and rockfalls at 5 degrees because the mountain was literally coming apart.”
The fact that winters are warming rapidly, even as bitter cold grips large parts of the United States and Europe, may seem paradoxical, but weather is not the same as climate. “In a warming world there will still be cold snaps, just less often,” Trudeau said. “We will continue to have cold days, only probably less often.”
2034 is slated to host the Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Yet Rocky Anderson has his doubts. Anderson was mayor when the city hosted the Games in 2002. Today he points to the majestic peaks east of downtown and says, “In those mountains there is almost no snow. I don’t think we’ll see the Winter Olympics in Utah in 2034.”
This article was published as part of the collaboration between the project “Covering Climate Now” and . Mark Hertsgaard is the executive director of “Covering Climate Now” and environmental correspondent for The Nation magazine.
