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| Fri, 21st Aug 2020 13:56:00 |
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The climate crisis is hitting football – but the global game has time to take action |
Like everything else in 2020, the football season in Europe has been unusual. The Champions League final this Sunday, its traditional climax, is three months late. All eight quarter-finalists have been quarantined in Lisbon. What normally are two-legged home-and-away ties have been reduced to one match played in an eerie, empty and neutral stadium. Even games of the calibre of Bayern Munich’s 8-2 evisceration of Barcelona were rendered hollow and bizarre.Yet, as with the wider impacts of the world’s lockdowns, this has been good news for football’s carbon emissions. Last year, the World Land Trust estimated that the Champions League final alone would generate nearly 10,000 tonnes of carbon. In the absence of a crowd, it is estimated that this year’s will be under 3,000 tonnes. Uefa promises that all will be back to normal for 2021, and who could not long for the return of crowds and their electric energies? But the climate crisis will still be with us.In any case, there is no going back to normal. Football is going to feel the impact of the climate emergency very soon. More very hot weather is going to be a problem for spectators and players alike. The physiology of overheating is complex, but once it starts hitting 35C, and you are playing football, it’s all bad news. Memory, hand-eye coordination and concentration all start to suffer, then there are heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heatstroke. There are going to be a lot more days like that in the global football calendar in the next few decades. Pre-season training in the Mediterranean is becoming physiologically dangerous. Grassroots and informal play in great swaths of the global south will become intolerable.
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