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Climate Change and Pigskins?

Posted by :James Howden On : February 7, 2007
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Category: All About Sports

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[This piece first appeared on the main “At First Glance” pane of the site, so that those allergic to sport might not miss it.]

It is surprising and encouraging when unlikely dance partners like these get together: global consciousness meets pro football?!  (For another similar example – which I also refused to place in JH.com’s jock ghetto — read about Canadian Olympic medallist Sara Renner’s outlook here.)

Leigh Steinberg is one of the top sports agents in the United States. (He is alleged to be the model for the film Jerry Maguire, if that helps you any.) He’s well known to sports fans because he has represented many of the top athletes, including many of the National Football League’s number one draft choices. I heard Steinberg on jock radio during the build-up to the Super Bowl. I hadn’t known until, oh, three minutes ago that he insists that all his clients include some form of community service or charitable giving in each contract they sign. So I was startled – perhaps as much as interviewer Jim Rome – when Steinberg veered from talking about the athletes he represents to a blunt and bright discussion of climate change.

“Global warming is here,” he said, and began talking about the numerous ways in which the monstrous stadiums of the National Football League could become more sustainable, even to the point of being net producers rather than consumers of energy. He is working at “putting athletes aggressively into environmental causes and efforts”. Sheesh. What’s the world coming to when football people jump on the ecological bandwagon?

Well, people are waking up, most importantly those of us living in the Privilege Zones of the planet. It’s a hopeful development, even if it’s not much more than a glimmer in an agent’s eyes. As for me, I sleep with EcoWoman every night – my wife Diana is an environmental avenger and a federal policy analyst – so climate change and other matters of planetary hygiene are standard fare. Suddenly, though, green freaks like us aren’t on the fringes anymore. Canadian newspapers and media outlets, including those leaning to the right, are filled with news and analysis on the threats posed by our consumption of energy and goods, and our bizarre levels of waste. Walmart, of all things, is dedicating itself to environmental leadership. (I know, I know, I was sceptical too, at first, but it’s real.) And think about it: if big business doesn’t get on board, the rapid social changes we need to make just aren’t going to be quick or thorough enough. We need everybody.

Even the NFL: it and other facets of the sports industry are enormous money machines, and have a large ecological footprint. They’re not renowned for walking lightly on the land, but maybe they’ll at least consider changing their shoes. Who knows? Maybe guys will take the bus to the game. Maybe they’ll recycle their beer cans. Maybe they’ll insist on stadium-mounted windmills. A man can dream.

[Other NFL reflections can be found here. Never fear. There’s more to life than sports, but then there’s more to SPORTS than sports…]

Through a Skier’s Eyes: Global Warming

Posted by :James Howden On : November 30, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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There’s a good story in The Toronto Star today about the point where the ski wax hits the snow. Or doesn’t, as it happens…

Two of Canada’s best winter athletes, the alpine skier Thomas Grandi and his Olympic silver-medallist wife, cross-country star Sara Renner, have outed themselves. They are environmentalists. They have a broad social consciousness that may have been pricked by their chosen sports, but which extends far beyond the winter playground to a greater concern for the way we live, especially in the wealthy Western hemisphere.

Grandi’s World Cup season is in jeopardy because of a lack of snow. Snow-making (and preserving) equipment is now critical to international meets, though it was rarely needed two decades ago. Many of the world’s top cross-country ski teams train together now because there are so few places with reliable snow cover. Renner skied through a driving rain at a meet well above the Arctic circle in Finland this year. The United Nations even proclaimed it a few years ago: skiers may be an endangered species.

What’s encouraging about Renner and Grandi is that they see beyond their sport. Athletes are young and they are focused. Elite competitors often live narrow and self-interested lives, and may be required to do so by coaches and associations that insist on Olympian levels of concentration as a prerequisite to success. But here’s the thing: especially for athletes in the well-paid professional ranks, how do they fill the other 18-20 hours a day beyond their training and competition? How much X-Box can they reasonably be expected to play?

No problem for these Canadian stars. They’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth. Not only do they know who David Suzuki is, they’re working with him on a public- awareness campaign on greenhouse gases and climate change. Their sport, and the industry and municipalities that support it are threatened. But for Thomas Grandi and Sara Renner, it’s not just about sport, either. They work hard – biking, cutting household energy use, buying sustainably – to reduce their own environmental footprints, and they even purchase carbon credits to offset the greenhouse gases produced when they must fly or drive. It’s everybody’s air; it’s everybody’s water, they say.

Bully for them for saying it, and for walking their talk. Now, when Sidney Crosby starts to express public concern for the increasing difficulty in building an outdoor rink, or when LeBron James begins to buy back the carbon offsets for his basketball road trips, we’ll know that the jock world is waking up to smell the global warning. (It’s about Climate Change, smarty!)