Paris 2024: Climate change conundrum and the role of sporting mega events
“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
This is a quote by American philosopher Henry David Thoreau – who lived and worked in the 19th century.
Nevertheless, his quote rings very much true today given the state of our planet’s environment, and might become much more poignant if nothing concrete is done soon to save it.
In today’s era, climate change and environmental degradation aren’t only the remit of environmentalists, ecologists and scientists, with virtually everyone, including those involved in sport, affected by the ramifications of a degrading environment.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) vowed to make the Paris 2024 Olympic Games the greenest Olympic Games ever, reducing the carbon footprint of past events like London 2012 and Rio 2016 by half. But the ground reality seems to be starkly different.
Paris 2024 was marketed as the greenest Olympic Games ever by the IOC (Image source: Getty Images)
As of now, no one can say with absolute certainty that the Games was a success in terms of reducing the ecological impact of the five-ringed circus.
But some tell-tale signs do reveal how greenwashing was afoot in Parisian streets even as the climate crisis rolls on around the globe.
Coca-Cola’s greenwashing at Paris 2024 accelerating climate change
Coca-Cola is one of the most vital Olympic sponsors and the only company providing the 18 million drinks that will be served at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
But what sports spectators could see at some venues during the Olympics was a classic case of brazen greenwashing.
The drinks giant, in a statement, said that it “supports the Games’ ambitions to reduce single-use plastic” and was committed to the goal of reducing waste.
But on the contrary, at iconic venues like Roland Garros and Stade de France, spectators queuing at drinks stands actually saw drinks being poured from plastic bottles into plastic cups, that were marketed as ‘reusable eco-cups’ which could be returned to reclaim a €2 deposit.
Thus, in effect what was happening on the ground at some venues at the Paris Olympics was anything but commitment to the goal of reducing London 2012’s carbon footprint by half.
The uncomfortable fact that Coca-Cola is the biggest plastic polluter on the globe, as per a survey report released in February this year, further puts into doubt whether or not it will ultimately mend its ways at future Olympic Games.
Coca-Cola is a long-standing IOC partner, but also the world’s leading plastic polluter (Image source: Getty Images)
Freelance journalist Vitas Carosella, who specialises in sport and climate change, hit out at the hypocritical nature of the Coca-Cola-IOC partnership facade in an exclusive interview with the Sports Gazette.
“I’m not naive to the fact that sponsorship is a requirement in sport and there needs to be money coming from somewhere to put on these kinds of events.
“I just think that at this point and in this day and age, partnering with a company like Coca-Cola that is a driver of plastic creation and pollution just does not make any sense.”
Surfing at Paris 2024 contributed to climate change
The damage to the environment doesn’t just end at drinks stands in Paris, even occurring a whopping 15,000 kilometres away in Tahiti, where the surfing events for Paris 2024 were held.
The IOC’s desire to construct a new aluminium judging tower for surfing led to catastrophic damage to the coral reef in Tahiti’s southern village of Teahupo‘o.
In December 2023, a barge damaged the coral reef, with videos circulating on the internet showing broken corals as the vessel got stuck in a high tide. Legitimate impact studies will be needed in the near future to determine and assess the damage that was caused.
Teahupo‘o is enormously famous for the shape of its waves among surfers around the world (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
The option of renovating an existing wooden tower instead of building a new one was rejected by the IOC because it viewed the foundations of the existing structure as having deteriorated over time.
Another alternative of building a new wooden tower was discarded as it would have entailed designing the entire construction project from scratch, and would not have been completed in time for the Olympic Games.
Referring to the legacy that Paris 2024 leaves behind for Tahiti and French Polynesia, Carosella said: “If what you are actually doing on the ground is detrimental to the local community, then it’s a net negative.
“If you ruin the marine ecosystem, if you ruin how the ocean functions as a whole, surfing is worse off for it.”
Politics of climate change: The worldview on environmental safety
The United Nations Paris Climate Agreement aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The ultimate aim of the agreement is to transition towards a net-zero emissions world, with developed countries lending a helping hand to their developing counterparts to expedite the process.
On paper, the world’s countries have pledged to protect the environment, but the ground reality points to something else entirely.
Saudi Arabia is one of the principal drivers of the climate crisis around the world (Image source: Getty Images)
Saudi Arabia is a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement in principle, but its actions are in reality the catalyst for more deterioration and damage to the planet’s environment.
It is the lowest-ranked country in this year’s Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), having fallen five ranks from last year.
ALSO SEE: Sportswashing and Saudi Arabia: In conversation with Dr. Jules Boykoff
At a time when the kingdom with enormous oil-generated wealth should focus its efforts on stemming environmental degradation, it still has not tapped into any renewable sources of energy.
As a result, it ranks poorly across all CCPI index categories, namely energy use, climate policy, renewable energy, and greenhouse gas emissions.
And to make the situation worse, it seems that there genuinely is no political or administrative will among the top brass of the Gulf state to better the planet’s environment.
Case in point, at the COP27 conference held in Egypt, Saudi Arabia’s delegation included fossil fuel lobbyists, and tried to play the game of semantics with the language used in the COP’s umbrella decision.
One would do well not to forget that this is a country which has been all but guaranteed by FIFA the hosting rights for the 2034 FIFA World Cup, and has even expressed interest in staging the 2036 Summer Olympic Games.
Elsewhere, another attempt by the UN to (apparently) save the climate – with special intervention from sporting stakeholders – is the United Nations Sports For Climate Action Framework. Two of its broad aims are to halve carbon emissions by 2030, and to achieve the net-zero goal by 2040.
The IOC is one of the signatories on the framework, but if what happened at Paris 2024 – including the Coca-Cola and surfing events controversies – is anything to go by, then achieving the ambitious goals of the framework looks like a far cry.
The IOC is, at least on paper, committed to the goals of the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework (Image source: Getty Images)
On this, Carosella, without mincing his words, says: “I don’t think these organisations are taking climate change seriously enough. And I don’t think that, given the current speed and progress that they are working at, they will achieve their goals by 2040.
“If we don’t seriously address climate change in the coming years, there may be huge groups of the global population that cannot even afford to shift their focus to sports for a month and watch the Olympics, because they’re too busy just trying to survive.”
What will sporting mega-events look like in the future?
To the very city in which the Paris Climate Agreement was signed eight years ago, the Olympic movement brought a whole host of environmental challenges for athletes, spectators and sporting officials.
The Rings of Fire report, by the University of Portsmouth’s Professor Mike Tipton and Dr. Jo Corbett, warned that competitors at the Paris Games could collapse, and in worst-case scenarios even die due to heat stress in the French capital.
This development comes at a time when an unprecedented number of heat records have been broken all around the world.
A woman shields herself from the unforgiving temperatures in Rome, Italy (Image source: Getty Images)
“I’m a sports lover, I always want to sit down and see the best possible events, and the best athletes competing. But, no sporting event should occur if it is detrimental to planetary health, biodiversity, and local ecosystems,” says Carosella.
And, when talking about athletes’ recovery and performance, Carosella makes a rather grim prediction for the future of sporting mega-events.
“If an athlete needs to perform, recover and then perform again, they will be unable to. So we could see a decrease in output which means basically worse performances across the board.”
Add to this the fact that the next Olympic Games will be taking place in Los Angeles – a city located in an American state infamous for its wildfires – and one can clearly see that the time to take action to roll back the effects of climate change is right now.
“I think the biggest learning that LA 28 and any organiser of any major sporting event should take on is that climate concerns are real, they are drastic and they are immediate,” says Carosella.
“This is not a problem for the future. This is a problem of right now. There should be protocols in place for wildfires and the amount of air pollution and smoke. You need to be over prepared for all the potential outcomes of climate change,” he adds.
The Parthenon temple in Athens, Greece surrounded by smoke from a wildfire that started in the suburbs (Image source: Getty Images)
In a way, reinforcing the point Carosella is trying to drive home is the trail blazed by Greece’s worst wildfire of this year in the suburbs of Athens.
It feels like the Olympic pantheon of deities is also doing its bit to rouse the IOC from its slumber to reconsider its stance on the preservation of the climate.
And it is high time that all sporting governance bodies, in association with governments around the world, actually do something substantive to stop climate change and its detrimental effects.
If not, then it might be too late for even divine intervention – including gods and goddesses from Mount Olympus – to save the day.
