Sir, – Denis Walsh (“Everywhere you look in the world of sport now climate change is biting”, Sport, Analysis, January 15th) writes that “the big global sports are more conscious of the optics of climate change” and notes that the Paris Olympics committee hopes to have the event climate positive this summer.
This is good news, yet it must contain a lot of uncertainty in how it will operate sustainably considering the large energy requirement involved in running such major sporting events. Over 800,000 spectators (of which 15 per cent came from were overseas) attended the Australian Tennis Open in pre-pandemic 2020, a high carbon footprint from travel alone. The 2018 Russia World Cup released over two million of carbon dioxide and the 2016 Rio Olympics over 3.5 million tonnes.
While sporting organisation may use carbon offsets as a means of being carbon neutral for major events and consider emissions from spectator travel as a problem for the aviation industry, the time has come to consider a rescheduling or relocation of major sporting events that heavily rely on energy consumption to a time or place when the weather is more clement. Rather than heat-proofing the tennis court arena at the Australian Open with expensive ventilation and cooling devices to cope with extreme temperatures, holding the event at a time other than in peak mid-summer would be less energy demanding and less stress for the players and spectators alike. Holding the winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022 using artificial snow pumped out on the ski slopes by high-energy powered machines was nonsensical.
Paris 2024 has set itself a target to not exceed 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the course of the event by using the avoid, reduce and offset approach.
While trading in carbon offsets is sometimes known to exaggerate their climate benefits, the efforts to mitigate by decarbonising is admirable and should be the primary focus in limiting carbon emissions at major sporting events. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN McLOUGHLIN,
Ballina,
Co Mayo.