By Isabel Schatzschneider, Euronews
Every competition, race, and medal must justify itself, beyond simply adding to the growing annals of sports history. If not, our failure to act would go down in history as humanity’s most calamitous own goal, Isabel Schatzschneider writes.
The toxic dust is barely settling in the wake of 2024’s Super Bowl — or rather, the “Super Polluter”, whose advertising alone released as much carbon dioxide as 100,000 Americans.
But millions more sporting fans are now gearing up to pump the atmosphere with more poison by travelling to the ultra-toxic F1 races, as well as the 2024 Euros and Paris Olympics.
While the EU has targeted sectors in construction, energy, food, and transport to achieve its ambitious climate goals — the carbon footprint linked to travel and advertising for sporting events is being overlooked.
Yes, steps are being taken by the sports industry to go green — for instance, droves of sporting bodies used COP28 in Dubai to focus on their plans for sustainability.
Even the European football governing body UEFA said it was aiming to make the Euros the most sustainable European Championship of all time.
But it’s time to get real.
Pledging to ‘go green’ is far from enough
It’s been estimated the inflated 2024-25 UEFA football fixtures, culminating in the Euros hosted across Germany — will lead to teams and their fans racking up around two billion air miles — equal to over 4,000 return journeys to the Moon or almost half a million tonnes of greenhouse emissions.
And this greenwashing is not limited to UEFA.
Organisers of this summer’s Paris Olympics are touting it as the “greenest ever Games” – only this month they declared a new environmental precedent by using existing or temporary venues for most events and focusing on low-carbon building for the others.