All told, the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics are estimated to cause the loss of 5.5 square kilometers of snowpack and 34 million metric tons of glacial ice. Without the emissions caused by the event’s three main sponsors, those numbers would be much lower: 2.3 square kilometers of snowpack and about 14 million metric tons of glacial ice.
That’s according to a January report from the New Weather Institute, which worked with Scientists for Global Responsibility and Champions for Earth to determine the environmental impacts of the 2026 Winter Olympics and whether or not the staging of the Games was detrimental to the winter