World's best chess player sheds light on Almaty's air pollution

Like many Americans, my knowledge of Kazakhstan was limited to what I knew from the mockumentary "Borat" in which actor Sasha Baron Cohen plays a Kazakh journalist in the United States.

Then I enrolled in Penn State’s international reporting class which was going to the largest country in Central Asia and the ninth largest country in the world by land mass.

A simple Google search of the country showed striking views of the Tian Shan mountains surrounding Almaty, the country’s biggest city. What it didn’t show was the haze of brownish pollution that often obscures the mountains. That’s a problem in a city where the mountains are part of the soul of Almaty’s residents. The jagged snowcapped peaks are with them wherever they go around the city, providing a reference point and the best of views.

My first experience with Almaty’s mountains came when I visited Shymbulak, a famous ski resort in the region. After taking a cable car and two gondola lifts up the mountain, I got to see the landscape that had been on my computer screen a few months prior. It was breathtaking. But ‘breathtaking’ could also describe the air at ground level in Almaty.

Oddly, I first heard about the problem of Almaty’s air pollution from the world’s best chess player.

Magnus Carlsen, a 34-year-old Norwegian, is not just any chess champion. I liken Carlsen to Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, a “rule breaker” who never fails to stir controversy in his game of choice.

Recently, Carlsen appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most popular podcast, to talk about his career. In December 2022, the World Chess Championship was held in Almaty. Carlsen explained that the event is “being held in the weirdest of places.”

Carlsen ranted on the podcast that Almaty is a “pretty polluted, not very nice city.” The pollution bothered Carlsen so much that he fled to the mountains before his match that day.

The world’s number one player said that the mountains around Almaty were “basically the Alps,” and that he “was so miserable being down in the city" that [he] thought "for this day, if I am going to perform at all today, I need some fresh air, I need to get out of here.”

The result was Carlsen being two and a half minutes late to a three-minute match. Carlsen won the match and the Rapid and Blitz championships in Almaty.

The chess grandmaster’s comments spread like wildfire in Kazakhstan. You would figure that Carlsen’s negative views of the country’s former capital would create an uproar in Kazakhstan. Instead, most of the social media comments said that Carlsen was right about the pollution.

“The pollution has gotten worse in the last few years, especially in winter,” said Aruzhan Yestemes, a 21-year-old resident of Almaty and a student at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

Pollution is especially bad in the winter due to Almaty’s old coal-fired heating systems.

Yestemes said that the air is “harder to breathe on some days” and that “some days, you can barely see the mountains.”

An employee at Almaty’s Narxoz University explained to me that five or six years ago the mountains were almost always visible. Now they are rarely discernible in the horizon.

Yestemes said that she hopes Carlsen’s remarks “will make more people pay attention to this issue.” She suggested solutions such as cleaner energy, better public transportation, stricter rules for factories and planting more trees.

“Some days, you can barely see the mountains because of the smog. It’s sad because the mountains are a big part of Almaty’s beauty.”

What Carlsen, Yestemes, and I all have in common is a reverence for these mountains. While I have only been here for a week, I could not imagine Almaty being Almaty without their towering presence.