I worry about the climate but didn’t think more than 40 Women’s World Cup players would sign up to create a positive environmental legacy for the tournamentIf I had to pinpoint one moment when I started to really think about climate change it would be in 2009 when Cop15 was held in Copenhagen. Since then, my interest has just been growing and I have become more and more concerned about the future.My efforts to change my behaviour and reduce my carbon footprint didn’t come all at once, but gradually I have adjusted things in my life to be more carbon friendly. What is driving me is that the countries and the people that are least responsible for this situation are...
Record temperatures left players and spectators struggling to cope in England last week, and the game needs global solutionsAfter all the jokes about climate breakdown warming up the chilly north of England – suddenly it wasn’t so funny any more. A young Durham bowler being forced off the field at the Riverside by the fierce heat on his ODI debut wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card, but that was Matthew Potts’s lot on Tuesday – as the UK spoiled and burned under its hottest day in history.Potts managed four overs before he left the field as the mercury hit 37C at Chester-le-Street in the first ODI between England and South Africa – hoping to return, but not, apart from a brief...
We are in ‘Fergie time’ when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint but it is not too late to chart a path to sustainabilityClimate change is a defining global issue, and football is not exempt. Roughly a quarter of England’s 92 league clubs could be regularly flooded within the next three decades, and the average grassroots pitch in England already loses five weeks a season to bad weather. Sport is also a significant contributor to climate change, with an estimated global carbon footprint the equivalent size of Tunisia’s – and that is at the low end of estimates.It’s tempting to ask fans to reduce our carbon bootprint – but how can we use public transport on matchdays, when it’s...
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...