16 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY AUGUST 1-7, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com Green Team As the Olympics greenwash environmental promises, climate change threatens to undermine the Games. By Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin FORUM Climate change is stalking the Olympic Games. Already, dozens of activists from the organization Extinction Rebellion attempted to peacefully protest the ways the Olympics are harming the wider environment. But before they were able to carry out their action on the Pont des Arts bridge over the Seine River, police swooped in and preemptively arrested them. The activists’ demonstration could also be read as solidarity with the athletes in events like triathlon and marathon swim. They are slated to compete in the murky waters, if they meet safety standards. (They do not as of this writing.) French Olympic security forces smothered an urgent message: The world is on fire, and mega-events like the Olympics are hastening environmental calamity. Paris 2024 organizers said that these games would be different. They made sustainability a centerpiece. They pledged that the Games will be “historic for the climate,” the greenest Olympics. The reality is that the very idea of gigantic sporting extravaganzas like the Olympic Games must be radically reevaluated if the world is to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate emissions targets by 2050. In the early 1990s, power brokers in the Olympic movement allied, at least rhetorically, to address the climate crisis. One academic analysis, however, revealed that when it came to the sustainability practices of 16 Olympics stretching from 1992 to 2020, environmental follow-through was severely lacking. In fact, the four least “sustainable” Olympics— Sochi 2014, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and London 2012—were all relatively recent. In other words, as the International Olympic Committee’s pro-environment banter ramped up, their follow-through actually decreased. To be sure, Paris 2024 organizers have made some positive steps forward—limiting fresh venue construction, offering more vegan menu options and using recycled materials—but there is still a long way to go. Here in Paris, we met up with Madeleine Orr, a professor of sports ecology at the University of Toronto and author of Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Changing Sports. In the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, she bluntly stated, “A sustainable Olympics is an oxymoron.” We asked whether someday in the near future the Olympics won’t be able to be staged because of the climate. Her response was sobering: “I think that’s going to happen sooner than we think. We are going to see places be too hot to host the Winter Games. And on the Summer side, a 2016 study out of the UK said there’s maybe a dozen cities across the Northern Hemisphere that will be tenable to host the Games by mid-century. Something’s got to give.” The choice for the future of the Olympics and other mega-events is simple: Either they will have to be radically rethought to reduce their carbon footprint, or they must cease. The choice for the future of sports mega-events is clear: realdeal sustainability or extinction. Jules Boykoff is a professor of political science at Pacific University. Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation, where this story first appeared. OPINION Mega-events are hastening environmental calamity.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==