To stop the spread of green cleaning and sports cleaning in sports, this year bad ad campaign and Rapid Transition Coalition release Bad Sports Awards 2022 Appeal to the big polluters and the sports organizations that are allied with them.
Chosen by a panel of experts including Olympic gold medalists and renowned climate scientists, and for the reasons mentioned above, this year’s overall winner – the ultimate bad sport – is the men’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Other award categories revealed more shocking examples of green cleaning and sports cleaning. For example, INEOS won the Ride with a Ride award for continuing to use professional bikes to whitewash their reputation with the INEOS Grenade team.
Hijacking one of humanity’s most efficient low-carbon transport options while pushing for new fracking licences in the UK, not to mention marketing a new SUV, the Grenadier, to boost their public profile is a perfect example of the baptism of movement.
imitation green
For the ‘Goal of Your Own’ award, which explores the most glaring failure of a corporate sustainability programme, a water bottle from Manchester City Football Club’s Air Miles Recycling Exchange programme took home the top prize.
The NHL’s Edmonton Oilers have won the “Thin Ice Skating” award that draws attention to greenery and sports in winter sports as they continue to operate oil fields for businesses and suppliers active in Canada’s fossil fuel industry network.
Olympic gold medalist and environmental activist Etienne Stott MBE, who judged the awards, said: “Sport has the power to change lives, reach people’s hearts and inspire their imaginations.
“So it makes me sick to see the beauty of sports being undermined and devalued by brands whose business models are clearly against the interests of all sports fans and, in fact, all life on earth.”
Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysics and Climate Hazards at UCL, was a judge during his tenure. Greenhouse Earth: A Resident’s GuideAnd the awards judges said: “This year’s shortlist for the Bad Sports Awards highlights a shocking array of faux green nonsense and blatant baptism of sport.”
flood
Targeting sports makes sense for these big polluters and their ad agencies — which is why they have to be called up.
Sport has the unique ability to reach billions of people around the world on a regular basis, and its clubs and tournaments have a legacy of value, stories and reputations that brands can easily tap into with minimal public scrutiny.
Sport also offers advertisers and sponsors benefits related to healthy activities, which is especially ironic when air pollution from cars, planes and burning fossil fuels takes such a heavy toll on the health of athletes and fans.
The positive emotional connotation associated with the sports spectacle is being used by companies with a tortuous history to whitewash their reputations through advertising and business partnerships. Scientific research has shown that this practice is effective.
When you consider the vulnerability of sport in the face of climate change, sport provides a platform for the big polluters, and it feels like a Shakespeare tragedy. Every season for the next three decades, a quarter of English League football fields will be at risk of flooding, while a third of Open golf courses will be submerged by rising sea levels.
heritage
Snow sports are highly vulnerable to rising global temperatures and could be a thing of the past entirely. The recent Beijing Winter Olympics relied entirely on artificial snow.
To make matters worse, the sponsors of the 2021 Olympics are Air China, Toyota, China National Petroleum Corporation and Chinese oil and gas giant Sinopec.
Someone will ask “So what?”. The financialisation of international sport has created a billion pound advertising sub-sector and many professional sports clubs now rely on commercial revenue to improve their facilities and teams.
But following this view requires sports governing bodies to completely abdicate responsibility. Sport has a responsibility to protect the athletes who play, the fans who make it happen, and the environment in which it takes place – now and in the future.
Major sporting events such as the World Cup and the Olympics like to talk about the “legacy” they leave behind, which is one of the main aspects of cities and countries bidding to host such major events. For now, however, one of the biggest legacies the World Cup will contribute is an uninhabitable hot climate.
unparalleled
That means sport must stop providing a platform for companies that are disproportionately responsible for driving the climate crisis and polluting our air, land and ocean. Cultural institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery and Scottish Ballet have successfully turned away fossil fuel sponsors in the wake of a strong grassroots movement.
Towns, cities and even entire countries are taking action to impose high-carbon advertising bans on climate grounds. It is only a matter of time before high-carbon sponsorship deals become a reputational risk that sports clubs and tournaments can no longer ignore.
Bad Sports Awards judge Anna Jonsson of New Weather Sweden said: “The Bad Sports Awards underscore how common and harmful high-carbon sponsorship in sport is. Sports organisations and their governing bodies must Crisis reviews its own sponsorship guidelines and immediately kicks the big polluters out.”
We can hope that the Qatar World Cup will be a bottom line for green and high-carbon sponsorship in sport, but it risks further normalization and institutionalization.
Sport has the unparalleled power to impact billions of people on climate issues, and its values of teamwork, leadership and unwillingness to cheat are exactly what needs to be tapped when tackling climate change.
these authors
Freddie Daly, Calm down – a campaign by the Climate Action Networka network of sports organisations calling for climate action in and through sport
Andrew Simms is New Meteorological Institutecoordinator Rapid Transition Coalition, author of the New Green Economics and co-author of the original Green New Deal.he is on twitter @AndrewSimms_uk.
