MICHIL'S NEWSLETTER
Lift facilities and future regrets
0.32m – that is by how much the oceans will rise in the world if all glaciers, except the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, were to melt. Considering the current global warming rate, nearly half of the glaciers will melt by the end of the 21st century.
Daniela Brugger was brought up treading the wooden floorboards of the mountain huts her grandmother and mother ran and developed a sensitivity akin to the one talked of by Dino Buzzati in Barnabo of the Mountains. This allows her to see the world through different prisms, as though seeing it through the lens of a microscope and of a binocular at the same time.
She experiments with fleece, printing a picture of a melting glacier on a piece of cloth, identical to the one used to cover the glaciers’ surface across skiing resorts. The aim? Raising even more awareness that something is changing, and ignoring the elephant in the room will not help us deal with the consequences which are already forcing their way through in our everyday lives. Indeed, a mere two years ago, on 3 July 2022, eleven people died on the Marmolada glacier due to a serac detaching and causing an ice and detritus avalanche.
We are complicit in this incessant, unstoppable, vital, underestimated change. Elide Mussner, Hotel La Perla’s Sustainability Manager, talked about the photography exhibition in the following terms: “Raising awareness about climate change is an important part of the process towards increased corporate sustainability. In ten years, the Marmolada, which is just around the corner, will have melted. Alpine tourism as we know it today will no longer exist and be possible. Let us think about the future now by focusing on respecting and safeguarding the environment.”
Even Georg Kaser, famous climatologist and glacier scientist, was present at the vernissage. He did not hold back and talked about the devastating consequences which await us if we do not act now to limit CO2 emissions to reach net zero goals.
Michil Costa said: "Glaciers are melting. Once upon a time they towered over us, majestic. In their wake, new flowers will grow, other lives will replace what was lost. What awaits us? Currently, all we can think of is eating, say, strawberry ice lollies, or turning up our air-conditioning units to the max to escape from the increasing temperatures. What will happen when everything ends? We may very well turn into that same ice lolly – ready to melt and return to the Earth that gave birth to us.”
The exhibition is open to everyone during the La Perla Hotel’s opening hours until 31 August 2024.