Snow skiing in the desert?
A bad-for-the-environment thing that everybody wants but nobody needs
“Why go to the snow when you can bring the snow to you?” asked movie star Will Smith, as he stood in his hotel room last month, overlooking the slopes at Ski Dubai.
Yes, skiing in Dubai — the desert emirate on the Persian Gulf, where the average December temperature is a not-so-chilling 70 degrees. The resort is the winner of December’s Thneed Trophy — a bad-for-the-environment thing that everybody wants but nobody needs. (Did the Fresh Prince really have to travel all the way from the United States to Dubai to get in a few runs?)
Ski Dubai is essentially a 260 foot-high indoor mountain, kept around 32 degrees year-round by massive fossil-fuel powered air-conditioning units. It boasts the world’s first indoor black diamond run, probably uses desalinated snow (again thanks to fossil fuel-powered desal plants), and offers kiddos the chance to mingle with penguins just off the slope. (What would Mumble, the hero of “Happy Feet”, think about being stuck there?)
Yes, for just 315 Arab Emirate Dinars (about $86), you can get a day’s worth of minute-long adrenaline rushes schussing down Ski Dubai’s five trails, complete with the knowledge that plants and animals who died millions of years ago never imagined their precious remains being put to such a novel use.
Don’t worry if you didn’t come dressed for the occasion. Ski Dubai says it hands out a million socks a year, which are later donated to “help the needy”.
I can’t wait until someone builds a year-round indoor sand dune and beach in Aspen.
P.S. Potential indoor skiing entrepreneurs may want to heed the example of Ski Dubai’s predecessor, the SSAWS facility in Japan. Opened in 1993, the resort was expected to start breaking even in 2018. Alas, it failed to make it past 2002, eventually being torn down in favor of Japan’s first big Ikea store.
The Thneed Trophy is awarded monthly by Environmental Action to a product that exemplifies the spirit of The Lorax’s “thneed”. It’s the thing that everyone wants but nobody needs, for which all of the Truffula Trees were cut down. In other words, bad for the environment, with little or no redeeming social value.
This message is not associated with or endorsed by the creators or the publishers of the Lorax.
