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Santa Claus In Shorts?

December 19, 2007

That’s no big deal in Hawaii- but Greenland? Now there’s another idea for Al Gore. Talk about an “Inconvenient Truth“, if it be so. But, if the most dire climate forecasts come true the tourism industry in Europe’s far north, already feeling the effects of global warming, may find itself promoting a Santa in shorts and a camel-drawn sleigh. Yuk!

Who Wants Cheaper Auto Insurance?

Each year at the end of autumn, residents, shopkeepers, travel agencies, reindeer herders and even politicians in the Finnish Arctic town of Rovaniemi — home to Santa Claus’ Village, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Finland — look to the skies in the hopes of a snowy winter.

The past three or four years have been difficult in Rovaniemi. Each year they attract some 300,000+ visitors eager to meet the “real Father Christmas. Real you say? Real!

This December, with only a few weeks to go before Christmas, there are only seven-and-a-half inches of snow on the ground, just enough for snowmobiles and dog- and reindeer sleighs. But the rivers and lakes, which normally freeze over in winter and are used to take tourists on snowmobile or sleigh rides, have not turned to ice yet, and that’s bad news.

Tourism generates some 345 million US$’s of direct and indirect revenue in Finnish Lapland, of which about 60 percent comes during winter. It is an enormous amount of money for the region, hit hard by high unemployment and the rural exodus to bigger towns. And after all Christmas really is about SHOPPING!

Even when America is attacked and our Twin Towers were destroyed, some of the first words by WW Bush we’re, “get out there and spend”.

The village of 2,000 people, located a three-hour drive north of Rovaniemi, has already succeeded in persuading British tour operators to bring planefulls of holiday tourists seeking a winter wonderland to their town. While global warming presents several short-term advantages (lower energy bills, greater agricultural possibilities, a longer summer tourism season), the long-term effects are dire for the region’s fauna, flora and local population. Reindeer herding, the traditional activity and main income for the 70,000 indigenous Sami people spread out across the Arctic, is also at risk.

How will Santa do without back ups?

Sami Ruismaeki is one of Finland’s 7,000 reindeer herders whose livelihood has become more and more precarious. “When it doesn’t rain, there are no mushrooms and the reindeer aren’t able to build up their body fat before the long winter. Then the lichen disappears under the heavy layers of ice,” he said. The reindeer “have to be fed with grain or hay, and we have to bring water from home. It’s not profitable anymore,” he said.

We’re talking mushrooms and lichen- and global warming?

Beats talking about Santa is shorts!

Written by Ernie · Filed Under Daily Commentary 

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