Physics World.
Hello. And welcome to the Physics World Stories
podcast.
I'm Andrew Glaston. In this episode, we're gonna
be exploring the relationship
between sport and climate change. And this comes
really from my own personal love of sport
and my desire, of course, to see a
better planet.
This summer, I was very fortunate to be
at Wembley to see the England's women's team
win the European championships.
Nearly 90,000
people packed into the stadium.
And it did cross my mind at one
point, bizarrely, during the match, what the impact
of that would be on the climate. I'm
also a season ticket holder at Bristol City
Football Club. And while sport is only a
part of society, it clearly has a large
reach. What if sport was used to do
communication
about climate change? What kind of impact could
that have on the 1,000 of people travelling
to sporting events each weekend?
And in the run up to the the
men's World Cup in Qatar, there's been some
discussion
about the impact that that will have on
the climate.
In fact, protests in France have seen mayors
refusing
to show the games on large screens in
cities and town centers as a result of
both the perceived impact on the climate and
in protest against perceived human rights negligence in
Qatar.
Later in the podcast, we'll hear about a
team close to my heart and what they're
doing to try and combat their impact on
the climate. And we'll hear about a cricket
team whose very existence
is born out of a group whose purpose
is to try to save the world
from climate change.
Gilles de Vran
is an author of a report responding
to FIFA's claim that the Qatar World Cup
will be carbon neutral. So basically, we started
out just with a question, like, how realistic
is this? Can we trust it? And does
it does it really mean anything? And it's
based on on sound accounting.
And
our conclusion is that it is not credible.
It's it's a misleading claims. It's basically greenwashing,
and it's highly unlikely that the World Cup
is not going to have a negative impact
on the climate. There are two main reasons
for that. The first is
problems around accounting of emissions. The fact that
they have massively underestimated
the emissions, especially
related to the construction of the stadiums, and
I'll go a little bit more in detail
on that. And the second issue is related
to the compensation. So to compensate emissions, they
are
purchasing these carbon offsets, these term credits, so
basically buying
emission reductions from someone else.
And the credits they have purchased,
first of all, they've purchased very few, and
the credits are very low quality. So I'll
speak a little bit to that as well.
So on the accounting issue,
the main
the most obvious element, let's say, the one
that was really kind of glaring at us,
is related to the accounting for the emissions
of the construction of the stadiums.
So there are 8 stadiums that will be
used for the World Cup.
One was already there and has been, somewhat
renovated.
1 is temporary in the sense that it
can be dismantled and then transported and used
again somewhere else,
which in theory is a good idea. In
practice, there are no concrete public plans on
whether and how this will actually happen. So
the organizers have said that, yeah, this will
be transported somewhere
or maybe given to countries that need supporting
infrastructure.
But as far as I'm aware, there's no
public information on what is the concrete plan.
So that remains to be seen. And then
they have built 6 new permanent stadiums,
in Doha.
And this is where the accounting gets really
problematic because
essentially what they have done is
they have calculated the emissions associated
with the construction of all of those stadiums.
So the total footprint of those stadiums.
And then they have said
these stadiums are going to exist for 60
years. That's their assumption for the lifetime of
the stadiums,
and they have spread out
the construction emissions. So not the emissions from
the use of the stadiums, which logically is
spread out over the period, but they have
spread out the emissions from the construction
of the stadiums
over that 60 year period.
And they said, well, the World Cup is
only going to take place for 1 month.
And so we're only responsible for a share
of emissions that corresponds to this 1 month.
So basically from the total
emissions associated with the construction of the 6
new stadiums,
they take responsibility for a share that is
1 month divided by 60
years. So it's a very, very small share
of,
of the total emissions, and that's why we
say this probably underestimates the emissions by
about 1.4
megatons, so 1,400,000
tons.
And so and that's that's quite a conservative
estimate.
And so if you add that to their
existing estimate, their total footprint is closer to
5 megatons rather than the 3.6 that they
that they have announced. So that's kind of
the
the the main problem with the accounting, let's
say, is this
idea or this this kind of artificial spread
of emissions and saying we're only responsible for
this small share.
And then turning to the second issue of
the of the carbon credits.
So I'm not sure how familiar you are
with carbon markets, but just to give you,
like, a rapid overview, the idea is that
you have projects that are implemented,
in different countries around the world. And then
these projects,
reduce emissions and they generate comm credits. Each
credit is supposed to represent 1 ton of
CO 2 that has been reduced.
And so to compensate all of their emissions,
according to their own calculations,
they will FIFA and the Qatari organizers would
need to buy 3,600,000
credits because their footprint is 3,600,000
tons.
So far, they have an agreement with one
standard called the Global Carbon Council
to purchase 1,800,000
credits.
So they have an existing agreement for,
yeah, like about about half roughly,
of the total that they have to buy.
They have so far purchased,
slightly less than 200,000.
So they have 200,000
from the 3,600,000
that they need. So they're pretty far off
the mark.
And it is noteworthy that
the this global carbon council that they are
buying credits from,
has basically been established by Qatar. So instead
of like, the whole idea of having standards,
and the whole structure of the carbon market
is that you have these independent standards and
programs
that are in charge of registering the projects.
They checked with they check whether project is
credible. Like, is it really reducing emissions? And
is it harming local communities, for example? Does
it do the accounting properly, etcetera?
And you have you have a few standards
that exist. There are 2 major standards that
are called the the verified carbon standard and
gold standard. So these are kind of,
let's say, independent organizations.
But instead of buying credits from those,
the Qatari organizers have basically set up their
own standard, which is the Global Carbon Council,
which raises serious questions about the independence
of that standard because the whole point of
having a standard is to have this third
party that can,
yeah, be there as a
as an external voice to to to guarantee
the quality of the credits. So they have
established their own standard.
And so far, the organizers have purchased the
credits from 3 projects.
So in our report, we'd wrote, 2, but
since we published our report, there's a third
one that has, sold credits.
All of them are renewable energy projects. 2
of them are in Turkey. 1 is in
Serbia.
The issue with those credits,
is so they're very they're not it's not
really credible to compensate your emissions with those.
And that's because these projects are,
they're set to be not non additional,
which is a bit of a technical term
to say that basically these projects would happen
anyway regardless of whether they can sell credits
or not.
Because I mean, here we're talking about relatively
large scale renewable energy projects in Turkey and
Serbia. These are profitable. Like they're just economically
viable.
Expanding renewable energy generation in most countries around
the world,
is economically viable.
In a few countries, it's not like in
least developed countries, for example. And so there,
it might still make sense, but those projects
would definitely have happened without the sale of
the credits. And so while FIFA is claiming,
well, we're paying for these extra reductions and
thanks to our money, we're generating these and
so it's offsetting our emissions.
The reality is basically they're sending some money
to a project that doesn't need it.
And so the emissions that, the reductions are
generated by those projects are maybe real, but
they're completely
unrelated
to the purchase of common credits by FIFA.
And so it's just inaccurate to say that
this compensates for any sort of,
emissions.
And so that's that kind of explains why,
these
offsets are not credible,
and why as a result, the whole kind
of compensation claim is not is not credible.
Can you tell me a bit more about
the legacy of the stadiums? I mean, that
the stadium that's gonna move after the games.
That sounds really interesting if a little difficult.
I think the the dismountable stadium is it's
an interesting idea. Like in theory, I think
it's a good idea if we're
stay within this mindset of continuing to organize
a FIFA World Cup in the specific location
every 4 years. Like, as long as we
don't have, like, a a bigger systemic
think rethink of how these events are run.
It's an interesting idea to at least be
able to reuse some of the stadiums and
move them.
However,
as I was saying, there's no concrete plan
to move it yet. And there is an
interesting,
accounting,
study and report from FIFA on the dismantled
stadium
where they basically explained that actually the footprint
of the dismantled stadium is higher
than of a regular stadium, for example, because
you actually need,
more robust material because it needs to be
to sustain the
the dismounting and then transport and then reassembly,
etcetera. And so it's actually more polluting.
And if you had a scenario, let's say
where,
you dismantle the stadium, you transport it very
far and then you reuse it once, then
it's actually worse than,
building 2 different permanent stadiums.
And so the overall impact
really depends. And when I say that it's
from FIFA's numbers, right? So it's not my
numbers.
So the overall impact really depends on
how much is going to be reused
and how far and how many times it's
going to be transported.
So overall, I think nice idea in theory
could be beneficial,
but it's not really helping like a more
system change. And it really depends on how
it's going to be implemented concretely.
What about the other stadiums? Qatar has,
well claims that there are legacy plans in
place, so they have plans to reuse all
of the stadiums.
However, in the public domain so far, there
are two lines per stadium, basically one sentence.
And it's incredibly vague. So it says things
like,
will be
transformed into a boutique hotel and sporting infrastructure
for university, for example.
Some of the some of the stadiums would
be used for hosting local football teams.
1 of them would host the Qatar women
football team,
which I don't think is playing many games.
So there's definitely a big question mark over,
how these stadiums are going to be used
in the future.
They have also said that they will,
take out some of the seats because the
organizers themselves recognize that they don't need
8 world class stadiums in one single city.
And so they say, okay, we're gonna downsize.
We're gonna reduce the number of seats, and
we're gonna donate those to, countries that are
in need of sporting infrastructure.
Again, 0 concrete plans on what's gonna happen
to those seats and how they're gonna kind
of distribute these. I think it's something it's
close to 200,000 seats. I think it was
170 if I remember correctly. So,
yeah, it's a bit there's a big question
mark over that. Is it actually possible to
put on a world cup in a 0
carbon or carbon neutral way? I I think
it's it's not possible.
I mean, holding it as a zero carbon
event in absolute terms is impossible today,
because there is no way among other things,
there's no way to decarbonize the aviation sector
right now. There's no
real perspective to do it over the next
10, 15, 20 years. And so
that kind of connects to what I was
hinting at earlier of, like, having a system
change and rethinking how the World Cup might
be organized,
in the sense that if we continue with
the logic of hosting it in one single
country and having everyone flight there and not
really caring about whether that country already has
the, necessary infrastructure
that is definitely going to come at a
cost.
In theory, you could compensate for that. But
in practice, the quality of the carbon markets
and the the
robustness of the carbon credits, carbon offsets that
are being sold is really lacking. And a
lot of the credits that are being purchased
at the moment by companies and, the source
of event organizers,
they suffer from similar similar problems to what
I just described of, yeah, coming from projects
that would not happen, that would happen anyway,
or
coming from,
projects that completely overestimate their impact. So they
might be good projects, but they just say,
oh yeah, we've reduced like a 1000000 tons
of CO2, even though they reduced just 100,000.
So long story short, no, it's not very
it's not credible that this can be hosted
without an impact in the climate. Is there
anything they could have done?
I think there are pretty things that could
be done,
in
building a more sustainable,
trying to focus on more sustainable buildings, developing,
local transport, which to some extent, Qatar has
tried to do,
developing definitely increasing renewable power generation to be
able to,
generate more green electricity,
during the event, but also,
afterwards, because that's also one of the challenges
is like trying to make sure that it
contributes to a more sustainable long term transition.
However,
I'm struggling as you know this, I'm struggling
to answer this question because I think
it's a bit
and the truth is the right
thing to focus on, right? To try to
make these events a little less climate damaging
at the margin. I think as long as
we stay within the model where we organize
every 4 years, an event that attracts a
1000000 people from around the world in a
place that doesn't have the infrastructure,
it's going to have any climate impact. Right?
And it's going to stay with a massive
climate impact for the next decades.
And so if we at the same time,
it's hard to say, like, yeah, let's just,
scrap football. Right? Like, we also want to,
be realistic here. And so
I think the balance is in rethinking how
the tournament is organized.
And
I think they're yeah. It's much more of
a systemic
approach, and I'm probably not the best person
to think about this, but definitely FIFA should
have a think about it and probably,
people outside of FIFA as well. But you
could have options, you know, from the more,
most kind of crazy idealist situations where you
just identify some international territory, where you just
have all sporting events
to more practicable things where you say, okay,
we're just gonna have
teams play in the nearest stadium, like the
stadium that's in between the two countries, for
example. And then you try to instead of
having everything in the same country and having
everyone to fly there, you try to see
I'm sure you could. Right? Like, instead of
having consultants who model the, impacts of building
stadiums, we could have consultants who model
where can teams play to minimize the emissions
from travel.
And you then you, reduce travel emissions, but
then you also don't have any infrastructure emissions
because you use existing infrastructure. So
to me, and again, just kind of outside,
I'm just speaking as a lay person, I
guess, but someone who has been,
talking a lot about FIFA lately.
I feel like
maybe that's where you find more solutions. Try
to think about how you can completely transform
the the event.
Beyond your report, is there any accountability for
them saying these things, you know, if if
they're not true? I mean, that's a tricky
one. Not really
in the sense that they're just making these
public announcements.
The main thing that
could be used to hold them accountable,
are laws on misleading advertisement,
false and misleading advertisement, which exist
in many countries around the world, definitely,
definitely in Europe, UK, US.
Whether and how these are applicable
is quite difficult.
It's
it's broader than just this claim. Right? Like,
there are a lot of companies now making
carbon neutrality and net zero claims, and
increasingly, there are court court cases against this.
There's one in the Netherlands, for example. There's
a court case against
KLM, the the Dutch airline, where they said
they are gonna be carbon neutral. And there's
a court case saying this is not just
misleading advertisement.
So that's one way that companies could be
held accountable, but it is very difficult because
the legislation is quite old,
and it's also very expensive. Right? And, like,
it's basically NGOs doing that,
and NGOs don't have the budget or the
resources to retake these companies to court on
misleading advertisement claims.
So in practice, it's not happening so much.
This isn't the only net zero claim that
you've examined, is it? How did the others
hold up to scrutiny?
So we did the 2 main studies we
did on this was 1 on carbon neutral
fossil fuels. So,
yeah, as you can guess, the result was
not so much that they are credible.
It was mostly about it was focused on
LNG shipments. So natural gas, it's quite, it's
quite a trend at the moment. There are
a lot of, deals for carbon neutral
gas shipments,
which are problematic in various ways. And then
another one was,
not so much on carbon neutrality, but on
net zero, which is, I mean, in a
way, very similar or the same thing and
the net zero targets of companies. So we
looked at the net zero targets of 25
of the world's largest companies.
So like household names like Microsoft and Facebook
and,
Walmart, etcetera.
And basically looking at what's behind their announcements.
Like, is there an actual plan to reduce
emissions? Do they cover all of their emissions?
To what extent do they rely on carbon
credits? And from those, we found
one that was, that was kind of, that
had an acceptable level of ambition, let's say,
which was the Maersk,
the shipping company.
But, yeah, all the other ones were I
mean, one of the main issue, there's definitely
the reliance on carbon offsets for sure. But
another issue is the fact that,
the targets often don't really cover all of
their emissions. And that's what I was saying
also with FIFA, where they just say, okay,
we're gonna become neutral, but then or climate
neutral, but then they don't cover all of
their emissions. It seems to me clearly a
good thing if large companies and large organizations
and indeed large sporting events and countries
want to be seen
to be green,
to be doing things that are benefiting
or at least not harming the planet.
If nothing else, it indicates that public opinion
requires them to do something about it. It.
The idea of playing the World Cup in
neutral venues or not in a specific country
around the world does seem as though it
might be a bit of a challenge for
football fans.
But if COVID 19 taught us anything,
it's surely
that escapism
in the form of sport
is better if it exists in any form,
even if it's not the perfect form that
we're used to. As I say, I'm a
season ticket holder at Bristol City.
And you could go to Ashton Gate, the
home of Bristol City, and not really notice
that anything was happening that was any different
to the way that football has been done
for many years now.
But
if you look closely,
you'll notice
some detail. Outside the south stand, you'll find
a bicycle repair center which is made available
for fans
to encourage them to cycle to the stadium.
And while the club is keen not to
be seen as making grandiose gestures
or indeed greenwashing,
they did recently announce something called project white
beam. So before one of the matches this
month, I thought I'd take the opportunity
to find out what it was all about.
I'm Peter Smith. I'm project manager at Bristol
Sport in Ashton Gate. And and one of
those projects is,
project managing project White Beam, which is the
cross group environmental sustainability initiative,
between Bristol City, Bristol Bears, Bristol Fly, and
Ashton Gate. Okay. So that's football, rugby,
basketball? Yep. And the stadium more widely? And
the stadium itself. Yeah. Because Ashton Gate in
it on its own right, it's a big
established,
you know, Monday to Sunday,
business events, conferencing, exhibition centers. So the reason
why it's called Project Whitebeam, it's not a
random name. We didn't want to talk about,
0 because
our project is not just about carbon. It's
about waste and biodiversity, etcetera. We didn't want
to label it green, a, because neither none
of our clubs wear green, but also
the green message isn't for everybody. It turns
some people off before they even open it,
open the book so sweet, they won't even
take it off the shelf.
So we wanted to find something that was
uniquely Bristola, and the whitebeam is a plant
of the rose family. It's got a few
species that are endemic only to Avon Gordy
in the woods. So from the stadium, you
can literally see the only place in the
world that this grows. It's uniquely Bristola,
it's fragile, and it's beautiful. And I think
that's what we're trying to self convey in
that.
So Project White Beam was,
was
born out of a realization that we, as
a sporting group, needed to,
understand more about our impact on the environment.
So it was initiated pre COVID, and we
actually project we launched the project,
just before
the the first lockdown,
internally.
And
seeing a little storm on the horizon that
was COVID, we we kept the ship in
the harbor actually and just,
tried to make progress while we could while
things were locked down. And then we probably
launched it in August this year, 2022.
And what Project White Beam seeks to do
across the sporting group is is to
recognize our impact on the environment,
measure it, and mitigate it.
It's not about saving the world. And we
know that we won't be perfect certainly now,
and we may not be perfect for for
a long while yet. But we do realize
that we have an impact. So it's just
about starting that that progress and and setting
targets. So the the clubs have signed up
to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework,
which gives them a target of 50% reduction
in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030
and net 0 by 2040.
Now we don't know exactly how we're gonna
do that yet, but that's part of the
point of it is to set the target.
No way you need to get to and
then worry about how to get there. Is
it possible for thousands of people to come
to a football match in a net zero
way? I'd say at the moment,
probably not, if we're honest. And
going out to where we are at the
minute, I think the the clubs and the
stadiums
are probably in a similar position to where
many of us are in our personal lives,
where
we have an impact,
every time we do anything. And I don't
want us to get hung up on that
on a personal level as well. As soon
as I wake up in the morning, I
flick a light on. You can have some
solar panels. You can have green energy supply.
There's still gonna be some impact in there
somewhere. As soon as you go to work,
you can have electric electric car, it will
have some impact. Even a bike, it has
some impact. It's still got tires, it's still
got metal, etcetera, etcetera.
But
I think
long term, there there will be a way
where we as individuals,
as clubs and countries and and and globally
as well, will find a way to do
things in a truly sustainable manner. I think
we have to.
So, yeah, we don't have all the answers
yet, but I think that's gotta be the
aim. Okay. So what sort of thing are
you doing?
It's pretty broad. So
the Project White Beam seeks
to look across
different things of the environment if you if
that makes any sense. So we look at
climate change, we look at waste, we look
at water,
we look at air quality, we look at
biodiversity.
So it's not purely a carbon project. It's
not purely a waste project.
We've already started to make some progress on
a lot of these things. So for example,
food. I think most people realize that food
is something that we, as individuals,
all consume.
You put 25 1,000 people in the stadium,
that's quite a lot of food and drink.
So we know that there's a there's a
bigger impact there. Project White Beam, we and
what we've achieved
on on food, for example, is we've looked
at food
supply. So over 50% of the products sold
here today would have come from within less
than 12 miles of the stadium.
Now, I don't know for sure about every
club, but that's pretty unique where you've got
that much stuff in Bristol Beer Factory, who
last summer we went into
partnership with and supply a lot of our
beer and ale products. It's literally 350 meters
up the road. We've looked at the choices.
We've not borrowed
down into the detail of,
sourcing yet and procurement.
But we do know that there should be
availability for plant based foods. And I think
we worked out so looking at it yesterday,
I think it's something like 19 vegetarian
options,
of which I think 17 of those were
hot today. So if you're vegetarian, you've got
19 options.
I am vegetarian, and
I remember going to football grounds,
over the years. And bluntly, I stopped trying
because I'd get to so many grounds. And
you'd say, as especially as an away fan,
you'd turn around and say, what's what have
you got that's vegetarian? And it'd be crisps.
And I literally remember eating about 5 bags
of crisps. I was so hungry. We've also,
I think, I think, on top of head
around 15 of those are vegan options as
well. Of our
10 biggest alcoholic,
drinks, they're all vegan.
So
there's a choice there. And then we've looked.
So that's, I guess, the procurement of it
and and what we offer on-site. And then
there's
the the waste elements as well.
So,
the biggest thing is that we
for us,
football clubs can be and stadiums can be
big takeaways, if you like, with a lot
of waste at the end of the day.
You've got a very big peak on a
Saturday and not much of it. So,
we're keen to make sure we're not throwing
surplus pies and pasties in the bin at
the end of the day. So we partnered
with St. Mungo's
Charity, and any surplus food left today that's
safe to be transported off will go less
than a mile away to a women's refuge.
And beyond that as well, we've had now
two and a half years of partnership with
Fair Share Southwest, who operate from
a building just
about 20 meters that way. It's on our
site.
They've had a warehouse asset for 2 and
a half years, and they've
been able to pass on nearly 5,000,000 meals
worth 1,000,000 meals worth of food to people
living with food insecurity.
Now in the early phase of that, some
of that was actually Defra aid, but most
of what they've done over the last couple
of years is food that would otherwise be
surplus from supermarkets.
I I don't have the stats at hand,
but it's literally 100
tons and 100, if not 1,000 of,
of tons of carbon saved through that. So
that has a really, really big impact. It's
not just in the local area. How much
is that Bristol City Football Club
are looking at different ways to avoid waste
in food.
Matt Parsons is the 1st team operations manager
at Bristol City. And a couple of seasons
ago, he started a process
where food that was taken away with the
footballers
would not go to waste.
When they go away, the team food itself,
they have surplus. You're never gonna get it
manage it quite exact.
So, I mean, massive credit for Matt. He's
been doing it for 3 years now. And
I think over the course of 3 years,
he thinks it's about almost a 1000 meals
worth of food over the course of each
season.
And they make the effort to go out
to a local charity run-in the city or
near the the stadium that we're playing at
and get the surplus food to them. And
and the reason I give Matt and his
team a huge amount of credit for that
specifically is that
there's there's often in sport a debate about
team performance versus
environmental, social, consciousness, and all this stuff. And
Matt's found a pathway that it doesn't affect
that. He does it on his own back.
It
they travel a long way to some of
these away games, and they're very, very busy.
And Matt's managed to find a way to
to to you know, that's effort. He has
to go away and find charities and,
and soup kitchens or or shelters
in towns that he doesn't know and find
a a charity that that actually wants that
food. That sounds very silly, but it's not
appropriate for every shelter because they may be
zero food or they may only deal with
a certain supply of food that has to
be regular. So,
you know, Matt got organized because him and
the team wanted to achieve good, and they've
done it. And that's, again, it's 3,000 of
meals that have gone into a mouth rather
than into a bin Mhmm. Which not only
helps producing greenhouse gas emissions. Okay. So, thinking
about the people getting to the stadium, what
can you do as a club for that?
Yeah.
So travel and transport is is another big
hitter. We'd we're
and transport is is another big hitter.
We'd we are in the process of measuring
our benchmark here in terms of greenhouse gas
emissions. We don't know how much of a
percentage it is. Some other leagues and stadiums
around Europe
have estimated that roughly 80% of greenhouse gases
could be
supported travel.
So we're not in direct control of that,
but it is something that we we want
to, you know, got potential to make great
strides in.
So
in terms of that, it's really about trying
to encourage sustainable travel and mass travel wherever
possible and reduce single car usage.
When we redeveloped Ashton Gate
and reopened it so it opened up fully
in 2016, we started to introduce the the
match day shuttle bus routes.
We have 3,
2 from park and ride sites and one
from,
Temple Meads and City Centre.
They are subsidized by the club, and there's
a significant subsidy goes into that.
And I I again, of course, my statistic
here, but I think when we measured it,
over the course of 2019 pre pandemic,
the collective
miles
that we'd,
that we'd
got people or to kilowatts, should I say,
that people have traveled on this bus was
something like 2 and a half 1000000 in
a year. I'll check that. Right.
But it it's it's a lot again, because
of the the power and potential of a
lot of people, you've also got a lot
of potential good to be done. Yeah. So
it's, you know, thousands of people every match
day using sustainable travel. In terms of cycling,
we've got cycle racks for free bike pump,
to use. And on days like and today's
one of them, we have a bike repair
workshop out there. We appreciate that cycling isn't
gonna be appropriate for everybody due to distance
traveled, ability ability to ride a bike, whatever
it may be. But we do want to
try and take away barriers to do it
and incentivize it. So having Leah out there
at the moment giving cyclists free bike repairs
and and and advice
is starting to to encourage and reward that
that behavior.
So, yeah, we really want to pull on
lots of different things there. And and, again,
I wanna get away from this one solution
for everybody's travel because
we're a broad church with lots of different
fans coming from lots of different places and
lots of different behaviors. Some will pick up
families. Some will drop off kids. Some will
go via pubs or whatever on the on
on route. So it's about trying to offer
as many different options to get people out
of their cars as possible. Mhmm. Do you
have a sense of how many people walk?
Our last survey was done pre COVID as
we did a supported travel survey,
and we used to do that annually. We
we paused last year just because we'll we'll
run it summer instead because,
of this autumn, should I say. We we
want to borrow down to a little bit
more detail about the carbon of that journey,
not just the behavior, but we need a
little bit more detail on each person's behavior.
We are lucky compared to a lot of
clubs in so far as we are
we might be on a slight western edge,
but we are within walking distance of a
lot of the city and a lot of
the heartland.
We're, you know, we're, what, 30 minutes walk
from the city center,
40 minutes from the mainline train station, pretty
15 to Parson Street railway station.
So, yeah, we'd you know, anecdotally, you can't
go out there, but now you wouldn't necessarily
know which people to park stuff and walk
in, but you'll see, you know, you can
see the floods coming down. Now I did
out myself as something of a football fan
at the start of this podcast.
And as well as being a season ticket
holder at Ashton Gate for the men's Bristol
City team, I'm also a season ticket holder
at the Robins High Performance Centre, the home
of the Bristol City women's team. The Robins
High Performance Centre is also the training facilities
for both the men's and women's teams. And
over the road from that is the Bears
High Performance Center, the training ground for Bristol
Sports rugby team. Both training facilities and Ashton
Gate
are, to some extent, new facilities.
We're lucky in that sense,
again, compared to most clubs because we had
investment in all our facilities. So Ashton Gate
Stadium had the redevelopment
between 2014 and 2016,
Bristol City High Performance Center and the Bears
High Performance Center are all new facilities.
So,
Ashton Gate, as an example, has 750 square
meters worth of solar panels on the Lansdowne
stand roof. We have energy saving light bulbs.
So if we sit in here long enough,
and last time I was doing a podcast
in here, the lights turned out on us,
for example.
If you go into the bathrooms, they are
low water,
low flow taps.
We have a building management system which enables
Ross and the team upstairs and even remotely
when they're at home to realize that if
a room's being heated and the people have
vacated or they've realized that actually it's been
left on, they can remotely control things. So
those things some of those mechanics and the
engineering plan is quite I find it quite
dry and boring personally, but actually makes a
massive difference to your energy use.
But we're not there yet. There's obviously more
we can do. But this side with Robins
and BEAR's high performance sensor, they I mean,
make sure I go the right way around,
but I think,
the Robins doesn't
high performance sensor has no gas. It's a
zero gas facility,
for example. Yeah. So, yeah,
we're we're lucky in that respect. We've Yeah.
Pull far less energy compared to a a
a lot of similar venues. Where do you
think the biggest wins might be? Probably
venues.
Where do you think the biggest wins might
be? Probably 3, energy travel and support behavior.
Energy, I think we've we've touched on there.
We've we've got a fairly low bar, so
that's relatively hard for us to keep going
by hand. But there is more you can
do when technologies
will change and develop. So we've gotta keep
pushing that.
I think,
food,
again, we we can continue to get better
at that. I appreciate you mentioned waste.
We definitely have some some progress to make
on waste. Although, Ashton Gate is a 0
to landfill facility,
there's
more we can do with
rationalizing the journey between what comes in in
terms of what we procure in terms of
packaging or have you and make sure that
the journey to where it goes afterwards is
is lined up. Making progress on that, but
we we we're not there yet.
And I mentioned fan behavior, and this is
something we did last over the last couple
of years with,
with a Bristol based,
enterprise called Pledgeable,
is to
enhance
the power of the sporting group to encourage
fan behaving fan behavior beyond
the the the the footprint of Ashton Gate.
I'm I'm slightly cautious here because we we
can't
it would be remiss of us to say,
well, supporters, you go behave better elsewhere,
and we'll just keep doing what we've always
done here. So the onus is on
us to look after our own our own
our own things,
but
it also be wrong to ignore the fact
that sport has a massive
reach.
And
it also has a massive reach to some
hard to hard to reach
sectors in society who don't necessarily engage with
the climate change message. Mhmm. And they won't
necessarily listen to podcasts that talk about green
stuff. They won't necessarily
read newspapers who champion this stuff. They may
them and their social groups may not particularly
think or care about this stuff.
But we can communicate with them.
And
I think the Bristol's
Pledge of Author and anybody who's not come
across it is a it's just a bit
of fun really on online where you we
go out to fund the supporters and ask
them to make environmental pledges pinned to a
game. They select what they're gonna change that
week or that month, that year, and it
will calculate the carbon saved and they'll look
it'll actually then calculate it by supporter base.
And it just gives a little league table.
And last year, Bristol City won the inaugural
Pledgeful League. Bristol City fans
pled made more pledges to save more carbon
than any other club by a long way.
Bristol City women's fan ditto way better than
any other women's club, and Bristol Bears are
the only professional club to have engaged on
on a rugby sense. So to be the
1st professional club to partner with Pledgeable was
great. To win the inaugural Pledgeable league was
great, but the real thing is that those
pledges
count, I think the sum total is about
638,000
kilograms of carbon saved,
and that goes to show the potential of
us being able to communicate and speak with
such a wide fan base. Mhmm.
And we don't wanna do that in a
preachy way. We've gotta make sure it's it's
fun and engaging.
Extinction Rebellion is a global environmental
movement whose stated aim is using nonviolent
civil disobedience
to compel governments into action
to try and to avoid tipping points in
the climate
system in terms of biodiversity
loss and the risk of social and ecological
collapse.
It also has a cricket club.
My name is Zena Cooper.
I'm one of the Bristol Dodo's Cricket Club.
Our original name was the Extinction Rebellion Cricket
Club, which formed in, 2019.
Why the change of name? The club were
keen to
give a little bit of distance between
the cricket club and the rebellion
because
when we did the series of talks,
I think at that stage, a lot of
the general public have kind of soured in
their
taste for, rebellion. It all started happy jolly.
Everybody thought it was something exciting, and then
it was tarnished by the press. So it
became a name that we didn't really need
anymore.
Okay.
Okay. But it brought us huge amounts of
publicity
in the first, you know, the 1st year
that we existed.
You know, everybody everybody loves us. People still
love us.
That's a shame to have to kinda ditch
the name. We still exist. We're still all
the same. But yeah. So the Bristol Dodo
is just gonna be what we work under
for
community stuff, like friendly games and, you know,
home ground stuff.
And when we take the kit out onto
the streets for rebellions,
which is was our original purpose,
then we'll still be the extinction rebellion cricket
club. It will still always be there. I
mean, you can't be upset with,
a silly,
fluffy, plump
bird.
A dodo is just a totally ridiculous animal.
Xena and the dodos organized a series of
talks
at cricket clubs. They were going to be
delivered back in 2020.
So after the rebellion, we got so much
amazing press. We got some
interest from the Wisdom. They featured us in
the the 2019.
Oh, sorry. The 2019
20
edition.
We had good links with them, and then
we also got into the 2021
edition.
Despite Xena's firm and passionate belief that everybody
loves cricket, I do know that some of
you might not know everything there is to
know about it. So just a quick aside,
the Wisden Cricketers' Almanac
is something of the bible of cricket.
It's a cricket reference book that's published every
year. The Time to Declare series was started
because we had made quite a lot of
links
with a gentleman who wrote the Hits for
6 Report.
He used to work at Lourdes and he
offered to,
to
come and give a talk for us for
free,
to kind of link up and collaborate.
So Russell Seymour did the hit for 6
report back in
2019.
Russell Seymour's hit for 6 report brings together
the expertise of climate scientists with the science
of sports physiology
to study and explore the current and future
impacts
of our changing climate.
Its executive summary begins, cricket is already feeling
the effects of a planet that's heating
up. Scientific studies have shown the fingerprints of
climate change on the heat wave that in
2017,
2018
impacted youth matches in Australia.
Storm Desmond in 2015, 16
that washed away Appleby
and Eden Cricket Club in Cumbria.
And the drought that played Cape Town in
the 2017,
2018
Indian Cricket Tour of South Africa. We found
that there were loads of other speakers who
wanted to talk about these issues as well.
So we collaborated
with Andrew Sims from the Rapid Transition
Alliance.
He,
had done a report
called the Sweat Not Oil report.
It's basically started to uncover
how advertising
in sport
is part of,
greenwashing.
We call it greenwash now. Green
washing campaigns for, you know, large scale polluters
or
for companies
that don't necessarily have the,
the the best reputations
environmentally.
They might sponsor,
you know, cycling
or,
football or, you know, to because people but
sport is a very emotional
thing. It's part of our culture. It's part
of our history. It's part of the thing
that people love about our nation.
It gives people a huge amount of pride,
individually
and as a country. You know, people run
marathons and people do all kinds of things.
Like, sport is
how humans
better themselves
on individual scales and on global scales as
well. So there's a massive amount of pride
there.
And, you know, the
large scale,
companies and polluters,
Obviously,
they capitalize
on on that. So the sweatlaw oil report
started to uncover how
deeply seeded these ideas
are
and
how they're actually when you really look at
it, quite incongruous.
How it's it's actually quite
devastating for sport. So you've got
polluters.
They actually, you know, cause
not pollution just across the globe, it is
in in specific areas. So
people can't breathe, you know. There was a
case in India where Sri Lanka
versus India, the the pollution was so bad
that the Sri Lankans were wearing masks
on the pitch. They they didn't want to
to play and the the game, I think,
got cancelled
if I'm not mistaken.
So, yeah, these things are really, really having
a massive effect.
People are starting
to to join the dots now. People are
starting to see,
how these issues are connected.
Is climate change affecting sport? But what about
sports affecting climate change?
Yeah. Absolutely.
It's exactly that. So,
the way the sports world is structured, it's,
you know, it's based on like, we've had
it for how many years now that sponsors
are basically the reasons we feel
like sponsors are the reasons we can have
sport.
You know, we used to have the Benson
and Hedges cup. We used to have, like,
you know,
tobacco
companies sponsoring,
motorsports
and everything. You know? I mean, those little
playing cards that you'd get with all footballers
and people would collect them in cigarette packets
and all that kind of stuff. But, you
know, it's embedded
so deeply in our culture that you must
have sponsorship in order to for sport to
exist.
Well, in essence, that's only one
that's only one way of
a funding sport, really, in essence.
And
sport can choose
to take money from
from other organizations
that actually or it can also, you know,
use its influence
to say actually we expect better.
But actually, you know, I mean, everybody has
to put their hands up in essence that
sport is a global
machine. It's part of a global,
you know, culture.
And
we
want to see international players. We want to
see the highest,
you know, performers,
at all levels.
And, yes, players get flown all over the
around the world and all of their teams
and etcetera.
I think people started to learn more about
that when it was COVID. You could see
that the COVID bubbles and
how many people actually really needed to be
in that country
to to have sport and for it to
to happen. And, obviously, fans moving around. But
it's very true. Yeah. Sport makes a massive
impact on
the global scale. But
is it as big as
governments
and oil companies?
Is it as big as all these other
things? Like, I suppose in essence,
everyone has to put their house in order,
You know? And sport has an opportunity
to reflect
and to
look at how
we can still
have all the positive things of, you know,
having sport on a global stage.
But then also,
how we do that sustainably. People talk about
sustainability
and, you know, it's not impossible.
We have so many solutions to these problems.
We just have to
be brave enough to actually
start looking at it and want to find
solutions. Because the solutions are there.
Yes. It's gonna be challenging. Yes. It's going
to be different.
It's gonna feel like, you know, a big
change and everyone hates change. But in essence,
you know,
I think when it comes to change, people
always see it as
a negative thing. But
if you
are
part of
making that change happen, if you are part
of the narrative to,
you know,
enact
change,
then you feel more
embedded in the positive vision of what it
can actually be.
You know, having change thrust upon us is,
it makes us feel like
we're at the whims of,
you know, time and history. And there's nothing
we can do. We're just
passive
pawns or players or, you know
and we just have to take what we
get. But actually, people forget that,
we
can
enact changes. And it's not just recycling. It's,
you know, big big things. You can
change where you bank or you can change
your insurance company.
I think sport,
if it acts quickly,
it can
connect back to its roots where
the ethics of sport.
Sports always had a history of
having a voice for social
issues.
I mean, for cricket, you look back to
the seventies, you look at the the Windrush
generation. So our last talk was about,
the
links between the history of empire
and,
history of cricket,
how that's linked to
racism in the game we see today, and
also how
the history of cricket and empire basically is
the reason we have
a colonial
a post colonial world. The reason we are
seeing
the climate declining in climate,
stability
declining in such a rapid way.
And our speaker talked about
the Blackwash series in the seventies. How basically
the West Indian team came over to the
homeland
and
and obliterated
the the home team.
And
at that time, there was a lot of
racism,
outward outward
racism, you know, the signs in the streets,
no blacks, no no Irish, no dogs, and
all that kind of stuff
was still rampant in the population. So that
for that team to come
and fill,
a black community with pride, you know, in
the Mexico Olympics, the,
the black power, you know, movement,
all kinds of things like that.
So, yes, sport can is part of the
problem, no doubt. But when you are part
of the problem,
you can also,
you know, it's time to reflect honestly
and,
be part of the solution. And people could
do that. We have a very small window,
but if anybody is going to do it,
I think cricket has to be one of
the, one of the main sports to be
leading the way. Sadly, we're a little bit
behind football. Football Football is already on the
front foot, and I'm really annoyed.
Even cricket. Cricket is starting to find a
voice now.
So the Australian Cricket Club,
the the men's team, the captain Pat Cummins,
he is started an organization to to try
and raise awareness for cricket and climate change.
He's been doing that the past year. I
mean, it's really annoying that, like, you know,
the home of cricket is so, like, they're
just so
slow. Like, how can we let the Aussies
be winning this one? I mean, it's like,
come on. I mean, I thought as soon
as we said the Aussies are winning, that
people would start, you know, piling in to
want to solve this problem because, you know.
But it is. It's a really, really slow
process. Cricketers
are very much
yeah. People just want to go and play
cricket, or they wanna sit and watch it.
They don't wanna have to worry about all
these things that are happening,
really.
But sadly,
we don't live
in
that luxury anymore. We don't have that luxury
of
being able to put this to one side
any longer, sadly.
What is it that football's doing that you're
impressed with then?
They did a net zero game,
which obviously, you know, it was probably a
publicity
stunt.
But, there was a you know, it was,
I think Liverpool. It was a really big
teams and
that was
talked about on the BBC.
It was talked about on, you know,
these national radio.
And, I mean, forest green rovers. Forest green
rovers have been just
well established for a considerable
time. Just a quick aside that you can
find an article entitled
getting physical with the climate crisis
by James Dacey on the physics world website,
physics world dot com. It looks at sustainable
infrastructures and initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint
of buildings,
including
Forrest Green's wooden stadium. Forrest Green is a
football club not too far from Bristol, and
it's owned
by a man called Dale Vince. You know,
he's part of ecotricity.
He's part of so he's been just doing
that for however long. And now things are
changing. Everybody's kind of going to him to
say, what can we do?
So they've been leading the way, I suppose.
And actually, we'd really like
I think Gloucestershire have said that they want
to be the cricket club that leads the
way.
The equivalent of the,
Forest Green Rovers in,
the cricket world.
So there's one club who,
they changed their kit,
but on the on each arm, they had
the the heat stripes.
So as a talking point, so people would
be like, oh, that's a weird looking like,
people don't normally have those colors on their
kit. It's not
in line with their actual kit colors, but
the arms have got these stripes on it.
And,
so those are the heat stripes that tell
you that how the the
England has,
the temperatures have risen in the past century
or 2 centuries or something like that.
And, you know, so they are they are
doing these things.
Cricket, I don't know what cricket has done.
So lords
will say that they've done enough.
They have,
you know, done good recycling.
They've,
they're using completely
solar.
They've got, like, green walls and stuff, but
they're also sponsored by JP Morgan. They weren't
still they're still, you know,
one of the biggest banks that's
I mean, they're an American bank. They don't
even
play cricket in America really on a large
scale.
You know, they don't
JPMorgan doesn't really have any care for cricket
in itself.
And,
yeah, they're they're one of the biggest
funders of new fossil projects
in the past few years. You know? So
in essence,
yeah, the home of cricket has got a
way to go. I think
the work the stance that we've always taken
is that
we don't want
to be anyone
with a stick. It's not like we're not
the ones who go onto the street and
glue ourselves to things. We're not the ones
who
are badgering
people,
and shoving things down their throat and, you
know, getting in their way of their ordinary
day. In essence, we just want to play
cricket.
We just want to do the thing that
we love
and,
and all the positive things that come that.
Annoyingly,
there's all these problems happening in the world
that mean that actually our game is
really considerably under threat.
Like the hit for 6 report basically showed
us how
of all the sports,
cricket is the most
vulnerable
to climate change
in the countries that
play cricket.
You know, in the the past 2 years,
we've seen
the worst devastating
weather events
in cricket playing nations.
So you've got the West Indies,
cyclones,
floods.
You've got India,
heat waves,
flooding.
Pakistan,
Bangladesh,
New Zealand,
Australia,
wildfires.
It's just, you know, it's completely and there's
and
South Africa. South Africa has been, you know,
obliterated
with flooding. And
when you talk about those,
those places,
it's not just,
you know, communities,
people, people's lives, and cricket clubs that are
suffering. Like in the long term, cricket's
a game where you have to you have
to do it for future generations.
So you if your club is getting,
you know, pummeled every year and you've gotta
rebuild it
and the community around it have to rebuild
it every year, you are devastating
the future players of that game. They aren't
gonna they they're not gonna rise up to,
to to world class level if
and the way I see it, and this
is one of the main things that has
gone
if if your opponents
are constantly
drowning,
you can't actually say you're winning.
Thank you very much to Xena, Gilles, and
Peter for talking to me for this episode
of the podcast.
In researching the podcast, I found examples of
good practice and bad practice from all over
the world. But after looking at the World
Cup, I wanted to concentrate on some of
the teams local to me, not just because
as we take our next tentative steps at
the point we are in our battle against
COVID 19,
I've been able to travel a little bit
at least
in a sustainable way and in my local
area and mostly for escapism
in the form of sport.
We'll be back next month when we'll be
looking at something else from this wonderful world
of physics. And thank you very much for
listening.
Physics
world.