Study says heatwaves, fires and floods, and rising sea levels pose major threat over coming years. The rapidly accelerating climate crisis threatens the future of major sports events around the world, according to a report that also says the global sporting industry is failing to tackle its own emissions.
The study found that in the coming years nearly all sports – from cricket to American football, tennis to athletics, surfing to golf – will face serious disruption from heatwaves, fires, floods and rising sea levels. It also estimated that globally, sports’ own carbon emissions are equal to that of a medium-sized country, adding that sport administrators and stars had an important role to play in global efforts to tackle climate breakdown.
The report found that in the next three decades a quarter of English league football grounds will be at risk of flooding every season, one in three British golf courses will be damaged by rising sea levels and the Winter Olympics will be increasingly difficult to stage because of rising temperatures. It also highlighted how the climate crisis was already having an impact on major sports events. Last year’s Rugby World Cup was hit by a huge typhoon, while this year’s Australian Tennis open was disrupted by toxic smoke from the country’s devastating bush fires.
The study found that of hundreds of governing bodies, only five have a zero carbon pledge, with World Athletics, Formula 1 motor racing and the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which runs Wimbledon, having pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030. The report’s author, David Goldblatt, said sport should be doing much more. “Few human practices offer such an extraordinarily large, global, and socially diverse constituency as those playing and following sport. Making a carbon-zero world the common sense priority of the sports world would make a huge contribution to making it the common sense priority of all politics.”
Source: The Guardian
Finnish site 
Global site