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“Was the glacier white? And how was skiing on snow?” This is the question posed by a child from the future, in a tweet by Anne-Sophie Barthet, a member of the French alpine ski team.

This high-level athlete was training on the Tignes glacier, at an altitude of 3,100 meters, when she posted this sad observation on Twitter in 2018, to alert people to the damage by climate change on the mountains.

Five years later, the projected scenario has become a reality. The mild temperatures and lack of snow on French peaks are disrupting the organisation of several competitions and sporting events.

In the Alps, the Tignes station was forced to cancel the “Andros Trophy”, a car race on ice, in January. In the Contamines, along the Swiss border, the telemark World Cup has been postponed until February.

These warm conditions in turn have created a growing movement among professional winter sports athletes. A campaign called “Athletes in Action” has been created to elevate climate change solutions.

Islands of artificial snow surrounded by green grass – the prevailing image for the recent European heatwave came from the Ski World Cup in Adelboden, Switzerland. The climate crisis means a snow crisis: snow is one of the clearest indicators of climate change.

We are witnessing a business-as-usual adaptation measure to this crisis: artificial snow, shot with cannons, and transported by trucks or helicopters to ski slopes. The point is that we are in a +1.2°C warmer world.

Yet nobody is telling us how mountain communities will adapt to a +2.8°C warmer world where the current global energy policies are driving us. At this point in the history of global warming, artificial snow is costly and disillusional. An average ski slope needs 20k cubic meters of water on average to function.

The only way to save mountain communities and ecosystems is to give up fossil fuels: this is not what is happening. Meanwhile, the UAE has appointed Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as president for COP28, the next round of the UN talks on climate change. A leading figure from an oil superpower will lead negotiations to give up oil, coal and gas.

The outcome of COP27 was the triumph of the energy status quo: no new mitigation commitments were agreed, and it’s hard to be hopeful about the next summit, hosted by a petrostate and chaired by a Big Oil CEO.

Don’t be fooled by the next few weeks of frosty weather: we are losing ground to the climate crisis. Artificial snow will buy us some time, but this is a big crisis which needs a big response: quickly reducing carbon emissions. There’s no other way.

Satire is no different from reality, when it comes to global warming. That was the public reaction after the Spanish version of The Onion published an article with the title: “The upper classes begin to worry about climate change when they see that there is no snow in Baqueira”.

Skiing and other winter sports that need snow are not so popular in Spain, as warm weather is the norm here. Ski resorts such as Baqueira in Catalonia are seen as an expensive holiday destination, and not for all pockets.

But this also shows the stark reality of climate change: for Spain, today’s scarcity of snow will mean tomorrow’s lack of water. The reservoirs in internal basins of Catalonia, for example, are at 31% of their total capacity. According to the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), this figure is “worrying”.

Three things are needed to make an Estonian, according to the old saying. You need to build a house, plant a tree and finish the Tartu cross-country ski marathon.

Most probably, I will never build a house. I have planted a few trees. But for sure I can tick off the marathon box, having multiple times finished the classic 63-kilometre cross-country race, named after the southern Estonian city close to where it takes place.

The excitement starts building every year in late autumn when the days here are sombre, dark and wet. That’s when checking the 10-day weather forecast becomes a bit of an addiction. Is the temperature going to fall below zero? Is there any hint there will be some snow? A few degrees this way or that can make the difference between the ugliest and most depressing time of year and its opposite — a snowy, beautiful winter.

The weather is becoming more unstable. Cold and snowy temperatures change abruptly to a warm and rainy climate, destroying the ski track in a matter of days. This means it becomes more difficult to enjoy winter sports. I take every snowy winter, and every snowy weekend as the last there might be. A few weekends ago, I forced myself to do a 19-kilometre lap, even though I was suffering from a nasty cold. This was because the forecast correctly said that the next weekend there would be no more snow.

I’m a fan of a diminishing sport. The number of people registering themselves at the ski marathon is declining. You can’t be sure if the winter will actually allow you to prepare for the tough effort or if the marathon will even take place.

Cross-country skiing has been part of Estonia’s national identity for decades. It is something that has allowed us to feel “nordic”, which is something the nation also yearns for in terms of quality of life. But soon we’ll need to find a new characteristic to define what makes a “proper Estonian”.

Building more is not the way to solve the housing crisis. Furthermore, it fuels another crisis: climate change. The building and construction sector accounts for almost 39% of energy and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Eight percent alone are caused by cement production. Maybe we simply should build less.

There is not really a shortage of living space in Germany, but we are facing a problem of distribution instead: Elderly people are continuing to live in the houses where they have raised their children, and these children are struggling to find a flat on their own. The amount of single households is rising, and all of them need a kitchen and a bathroom for an individual occupant, which means a lot more square meters.

Since 1960, the average available living space per person has increased by almost one and a half times: from 19 square meters to almost 48 in 2021. In Berlin, 25% more living space has been built since 1989, while the population has grown by only 10%. But even today, poorer people live in overcrowded apartments.

What we need is a change of perspective: we need to look for solutions on how to share the housing space we already have. This could mean swapping apartments between those who need more space and those who don’t, and developing new models of living. If we push these solutions, we could build much less – and reduce climate pollution, which is urgently needed.

Our house is on fire, as Greta Thunberg has put it. We should extinguish the flames burning the house we already have – by building less.

“I am so happy that I was able to get hold of a council flat. My monthly income is not enough to rent a two-room apartment on the open market. You have to know the cost of a council flat is about half as much as the rent for an ordinary apartment.

Still, it’s not easy to get one. In the beginning, I had to go to the authorities again and again to comply with the various requirements. In the end, it took several months before I got an apartment. So this requires patience.“

The first council flats in the two-million strong city of Vienna were built a hundred years ago. There are now 220,000 such apartments in the city housing 500,000 residents. Edit Gyimesi, 57, has lived in a council flat for three years.

Like many young-but-not-that-young Europeans in their thirties, my partner and I face a dilemma: should we continue renting or buy a house? Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: in Spain, we are lucky to be able to ask ourselves this question at all.

For most young Spaniards, renting is not a choice. It is the only option available. Gone are the golden days when banks offered a 100% mortgage. Nowadays, financial institutions require at least 20% of the property price as a down payment. This is only possible for almost all young people in Spain if their older relatives can help out.

Culturally, my country strongly favours buying over renting. I don’t have a single friend who would rather rent than own a house. Yet homeownership among the under 35s has almost halved in the last decade.

But the alternative has not been a real solution. Despite the ongoing digital transformation, most young Spaniards still have to move to Madrid or Barcelona to find a job. This has sent rents through the roof, with respective annual increases of 15.4% and 19.9% in 2022 alone.

There lies the Spanish rent trap. Ever-rising rents make it harder to save money, making it difficult to buy a property. This, in turn, means that young people stay in rented accommodation for longer. It’s a vicious circle that my partner and I, two of the lucky few, may be able to break free from, but it will keep younger generations trapped for decades.

Rising interest rates are expected to push up average mortgage payments in Estonia by up to 45% this year, taking hundreds of euros out of families’ pockets each month.

For Estonians, home ownership is sacred as this comparative map of European home ownerships shows. This attitude has been reinforced by years of sub-zero interest rates and booming real estate prices, which have fuelled fears of missing out on the opportunity to buy property at an affordable price.

With inflation at record highs and utility costs skyrocketing, people remember the 2008 financial crisis, when many lost their homes, are coming back.

Looking to rent an apartment in Poland? Be prepared for high costs. Last year, rents rose by nearly 18%. In the five largest cities of Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Poznan and Gdansk, the increase was even higher, at 30-40%. A two-bedroom apartment of 45 square metres in a major Polish city costs €800 per month, while the average income over the same period is €1,050.

Prices were already rising rapidly before the war in Ukraine, but when more than a million Ukrainian refugees arrived in Poland, the housing market became even more difficult. Inflation, fuelled by the energy crisis, is making matters worse.

The roots go back to the housing shortage of the communist era, but even after the fall of communism, no government has built enough social housing. The effects are still felt today: according to Eurostat, Poland has the lowest number of rooms per person in the European Union (just 1.1). At the same time, Polish families are the most numerous (2.8 people on average per family).

There are no signs that the situation will improve. The recent construction boom helped to alleviate the housing market deficit, but it wasn’t enough. Last year, the Central Bank raised interest rates due to inflation, making credit expensive and difficult to access.

This had a massive knock-on effect: mortgage applications fell by 63% in 2022. Investment is also slowing down: developers are building less and less, affected by the skyrocketing interest rates. Only if inflation falls will there be a rate cut, but the market has already changed. Now the Poles are not only stuck in literal tight rooms, but there isn’t really a way out for the housing market in sight.

“I have a message for Liz Truss… We work hard. We work the longest hours in Europe,” the Trade Union Congress (TUC)’s General Secretary Frances O’Grady told her conference in October, referring to the former UK prime minister’s leaked audio comment that British workers needed more ‘graft’.

British workers have fewer public holidays (known as bank holidays, as these were initially exclusive to bank workers) compared to their European peers.

O’Grady and other union leaders have called for new bank holidays to reward British workers and this, paired up with data from the 2021 census of the Office for National Statistics, which highlights the UK’s diversity in terms of ethnicity and religion, creates an opportunity.

Given the UK’s rich melting pot, workers of all confessions should have the same opportunity to celebrate their religious holidays with their families, from Ramadan to Diwali, from Hanukkah to Vaisakhi, as Christians celebrate theirs.

As all British workers, religious and nonreligious, need more holidays, these times could be used to learn more about different communities in Britain, as happens during Black History Month.

Another element that could reinforce a similar scenario is the role of the monarchy, as King Charles III inherited the Queen’s role as head of the Church of England, but at the same time, he labelled himself as “Defender of faiths” back in 1994 and will recognise all faiths during his coronation in May 2023.

At a time when divisions run deep and social tensions are rising, the opportunity for holidays where all Britons rest and spend time with their families, while exchanging and learning about other communities, would pay tribute to the kaleidoscope of cultures, religions, and traditions that represent the United Kingdom today.