<
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-paris-olympics-are-a-lesson-in-greenwashing/>
"The Summer Olympics will soon begin in Paris against the backdrop of heat
waves and drought throughout much of Southern Europe.
The organizers of the games say that in light of climate change, they’ve made
sustainability a centerpiece of their enterprise. Channeling their inner Greta
Thunberg, they promise that the event will be “historic for the climate” and
“revolutionary Games like we’ve never seen before.”
Yet in the city where global leaders signed a landmark agreement in 2015 to
limit postindustrial global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we’re getting a
recycled version of green capitalism that is oblivious in its incrementalism,
vague with its methodology and loose with its accountability. It’s too late for
Paris, but if the Olympic organizers truly want to be sustainable, the Games
need to reduce their size, limit the number of tourists who travel from afar,
thoroughly greenify their capacious supply chains and open up their eco-books
for bona fide accountability. Until then, the Olympics are a greenwash, a pale
bit of lip service delivered at a time when climatological facts demand a
systematic transformation in splendid Technicolor.
Greenwashing is nothing new for the sports world, where a massive chasm exists
between sustainable word and deed. Sports mega-events such as the Olympic Games
and FIFA World Cup have long voiced concern for the environment and claimed to
proffer solutions while doing the bare minimum—if anything—to make genuine
ecological improvements.
Nevertheless, Olympic organizers swear they are scything a fresh path. “We want
the legacy to be different,” Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024
Olympics, told
Time magazine. “We’ve promised to cut the carbon footprint in
half from the London Olympics in 2012.” Those Olympics in London emitted around
3.3 million metric tons of CO2. Paris 2024 is aiming for 1.5 million metric
tons.*
To be sure, this summer’s Paris Olympics have made significant sustainability
strides. But their earnest efforts have raised a broader question: Can the
Olympics truly be an environmentally sustainable event? “There is no version of
a sustainable Games as of yet,” said Madeleine Orr, author of
Warming Up: How
Climate Change Is Changing Sport, in an interview with the
Real News
Network. This sentiment is echoed by many, including Christine O’Bonsawin, an
Indigenous sport scholar and member of the Abenaki Nation at Odanak in Quebec,
who dubbed such measures an “Olympic sustainability smokescreen.” The
modern-day supersized Olympics, with its fossil-fuel-guzzling ways, is simply
not compatible with an authentic sustainability agenda.
So how has Paris fared?"
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-singapore-public-housing-colorado-river/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
