The Weight is Over!

Here’s one… ICYMI (not sure how, but…) this weekend's Formula 1 Emilia Romagna #grandprix in Italy has been cancelled due to significant floods.

It's not the first time a global sport event has been cancelled due to extreme weather conditions. Won’t be the last, sadly! What occurs to me however is less the cause of cancellation (floods) but the correlation between the cancellation and climate change…

Not long ago the IOC (International Olympic Committee) put their selection for the host for the 2030 Winter Games on hold. Why? We have fewer and fewer guaranteed ‘winter playgrounds’ now than at any point in our history. It makes staging a snow-covered event not only hard to locate, but carries significant and compounding impacts through use of artificial snow generation.?

Of the 21 venues used for the Winter Games since Chamonix 1924, scientists think that by 2050 only 10 will have the 'climate suitability' and natural snowfall levels to host an event.

Sport has always been heralded as a platform for social good. We see F1 drivers making social cause statements on the podium. We’ve seen an NFL player surrender an entire career in the interest of equality. Whether for inclusion or outright humanitarian concern, what I find alarming about this latest example is the distinct lack of correlation between the cancellation and the blunt fact that these extreme weather events are driven by climate change…

One of F1’s biggest drivers of change (outside of Seb Vettel) is Lewis Hamilton. Despite backing the decision (along with the other drivers) to cancel the race, no remark was made about climate impacts. In fact, if you run a search on these articles for terms like ‘climate change’ you’ll find zero instances.?

With the worlds eyes on major sporting events, why aren’t we using these moments to highlight the reality that these cancellations aren’t freak, they’re frequent and it’s due to climate change…

So what can we do? I’ve recently been working on a number of local and global projects tasked with building proactive strategies around being more environmentally consciencious. The main thing we can do is not sell work that has high resource demand, and not buy work that has high resource demand. Every brief you write should demand carbon neutrality as a minimum. Ideally, it should demand a high percentage of ‘reused and/or recycled’ material.?

Look at it this way, when a fan consumes their passion for live events, their carbon footprint increases anywhere from 9 to 18 times that of their everyday life. Sit with that for a moment. Despite their best efforts to live lightly elsewhere, the moment they do what they love, their weight increases drastically.

Our industry is one of the most influential platforms for the distribution of social messaging. We need to be taking a far more proactive approach on landing the correlation between these cancellations and the impacts of climate change.?

My thoughts are with those in impacted areas across Italy, and those in areas like my own home in Australia that have been recently ravaged by the impacts of climate change.?