Eight Ash Green have been concerned about their carbon footprint for years. This summer they hope to spread the wordWith 2020 the joint hottest year on record, extreme weather events stoking up and a plethora of bad new stories in he past few weeks – the Greenland ice sheet on the edge of a major tipping point, threats to global food production and a drastic drop in Arctic wildlife population – the climatic situation is grim. It’s a wet dog and humanity is following-on, against Darren Stevens.Last week, the BBC ran a project called Sport 2050. The idea was to raise awareness of how the climate crisis is projected to change sport in the next three decades. Its brief was...
Athletes don’t want to be accused of hypocrisy but the changing environment is already having an impact on many sportsFor a sector of society so adept at harnessing communities, cities, even entire countries, sport is strangely weak at empowering action on the issue which matters most. Perhaps the pace of sport, the relentless rotation of preparing, travelling and performing, restrains us from stopping, breathing and thinking about the existence of sport as we know it. Having globe-hopped for 25 years, reporting on Olympics, Paralympics, World Cups and tennis grand slams, I know I’ve taken sport for granted. When it stops – rain delay, postponement, pandemic – we notice. At other times, it’s just there. Silly games, essentially, for escapism and...
Sustainability is already on the agenda and it needs to be in a country that sends three cricket teams on tour every winterWith no live sport to watch or play, exercise has never been more precious. Those minutes of freedom, an uncurling away from bad posture on the sofa, lifting the spirits and boosting the heart rate. But, as you slurp your morning lungfuls of air, have your noticed a change? Think the sky has looked a more perfect cornflower, noticed the stars shining a little brighter?You would be right on all three, the falling levels of air pollution a tiny silver lining to our dreadful predicament. Yet air pollution also has a more sinister role in the coronavirus story....
‘I’m being sacrilegious but we need to look at artificial surfaces,’ says the Wanderers groundsman, Evan Flint, amid climate crisisEvan Flint has his feet up, at last. It is day four of the final Test between England and South Africa and, as chief groundsman, all he can do is watch as Rassie van der Dussen and Dean Elgar grind out the beginnings of a doomed rearguard action.Flint has been at the Wanderers since last spring, lured north after 10 and a half years at Newlands, where he won groundsman of the year during his last two seasons. He had had a lot to cope with. Related: The Spin | Cricket feels heat as climate crisis creates corridor of uncertainty Related:...
At the elite level, sport is run, funded and used as a reputation-garnish by the world’s greatest carbon-gorgersEdgar Allan Poe wrote a brilliantly sinister short story about a man who wakes up in the night and sees a shadow against the curtains that looks just like a knife‑wielding murderer come to kill him in his sleep. The twist: it really is a knife-wielding murderer come to kill him in his sleep.The murderer has a plan for this. He freezes, knowing his victim will convince himself he is simply looking at a shadow, that something this frightening can’t actually be happening, that your worst fears never really come true. Related: Australian bushfire crisis: authorities plead for last-ditch evacuation, with terrible conditions...