When I stepped outside, it looked like Switzerland, but it didn’t feel like it. In the distance, the white-capped Alps stood, majestic, reflected in the turquoise waters of Lake Lucerne as I strolled along the waterfront.
But the air was not the crisp, cool mountain air I was accustomed to whenever I came here to cover a story.
Instead, during this visit late last week, it was scorching and thick with humidity, and walking through it was like wading through cotton dipped in boiling water. In front of me was beautiful Lucerne, but the air felt like I was in Luzon (Philippines).
Along the waterfront, red-and-white-clad soccer fans clustered together to watch jumbo TV screens showing a FIFA World Cup match played an ocean away in the U.S.; Switzerland versus Bosnia-Herzegovina. Each time the Swiss team scored, a deafening roar cut through the thick tropical air.
The conditions reminded me of a reporting trip I had taken to the country a year earlier, when I hiked the Rhône Glacier with a Swiss glaciologist who explained how his country was one of the most vulnerable to a changing climate, where temperature extremes are more frequent, resulting in some of the world’s fastest receding glaciers.
At the end of the evening, Switzerland won its World Cup match, but it continues to lose its battle against a warming climate.
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