Interview: David Goldblatt and Brittany Peterson on Climate Change and Sport
In this episode, Brenda Elsey interviews two experts on issues related to climate change and sport. First, she speaks with Associated Press journalist Brittany Peterson about her reporting on a pond hockey tournament in Colorado impacted by a lack of ice. Then, she talks with David Goldblatt, famed football writer, about how global football is both threatened by and contributes to the climate crisis, as well as his sustainability project Football for Future.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Brenda: Welcome to Burn It All Down. It's the feminist sports podcast you need. I'm Brenda Elsey, and today I'm talking with two people who have thought and written extensively on climate change in sport. First, you'll hear from Brittany Peterson, who's reported for the AP on how the lack of ice has affected pond hockey and the communities that participate in it. And then author and advocate David Goldblatt joins us to discuss his chairship of Football For Future, and also how football in the global sense has both perpetuated and reflected the climate crises that are facing us all.
I spoke with Brittany Peterson, an Emmy award-winning video journalist based in Denver, where she covers water in western United States for the Associated Press. She's an all formats reporter and her recent coverage looks at how one town in Colorado's Rocky Mountains delayed a pond hockey tournament last month due to thin ice. So, Brittany, I wanna start with the tournament. It kind of feels like this quaint town, Grand Lake. Can you give us a sense of what that tournament feels like to attend?
Brittany: Absolutely. Grand Lake is an important recreation destination, particularly in the summer months, as it is the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. So, oftentimes 2 million people will flow through there in the summer times. And in the winter, there's a lot of recreation and tourism opportunities. However, it's much slower than the summer, which is why moments like a pond hockey tournament or their winter carnival or their ice fishing tournament are really important economic drivers to this small mountain town.
Brenda: So they have this tournament every year, and it's ice hockey. It's just like local schools on this lake?
Brittany: It is 18 and up. So, it's an adult-friendly pond hockey tournament. It's very much…Like, it has festival vibes to it. There are multiple cans of beers being cracked throughout the day. So there's five rinks that are on ice here on the lake and there's a speaker in the middle, there's music blasting. So it's a party vibe. It's a good vibe. Something that the community is really proud of.
Brenda: Okay. And so tell us a little bit about what happened this year.
Brittany: Yeah. So, this year the tournament was scheduled for the third weekend of January, and come early January the town was assessing the ice viability. And it was only six inches thick, it was slushy, as was described to me by the mayor of Grand Lake. And they decided that there was no way that was going to sustain such a large event and the heavy equipment required to create a hockey rink. And so that was delayed by a month. Logistically, not the biggest deal in the world. People just booked their travel for a month later. However, this is indicative of a larger trend, which is in the state of Colorado, the second half of the year, July through December this past year, was the hottest on record. November was above average temperature. December was above average temperature. And for Grand Lake, Colorado, that held true as well. And those are important months for the lake to freeze over and become viable for use.
Warm air temperature had a slowing effect on the icing over of the lake. And that was not just a one year thing. This is indicative of historical trends for Grand Lake. I obtained handwritten records kept by a local water authority of what's called ice in and ice out dates for that specific lake. So, it went back 70 years. I looked at just the last 20 years, and you saw that there are on average 14 fewer days of ice than there were in the previous 20 year period. So, we're just talking about significant change over the past 40 years. So that holds true locally; it also holds true nationally. I spoke with Sapna Sharma, and aquatic ecologist at York University in Toronto. She studied 60 North American lakes and found that, in the last 25 years, those lakes were losing ice six times faster than their historical average.
Brenda: So, give us a sense of what that means for long term lake health. I mean, does this mean lower water registers? Does this mean that it becomes unfishable? What types of things does this cause?
Brittany: Beyond delaying a pond hockey tournament, you also have what's called winter weirding events. So maybe winter is becoming more irregular in some areas, like in Alaska. I spoke with a fishing guide who had been guiding for 46 years named Lynnette Warren. And she was telling me that certain lakes, because of a warming that happened in the middle of winter, snow melted, water weighed down the ice, ice cracked, water seeped up from below, and the ice essentially flooded and lakes became unfishable. And so all the tourists and recreation fishermen flocked to just a few lakes, and those lakes became, according to her, over-fished. So, that’s another impact for something that's sometimes a less competitive sport, but absolutely there are effects for water quality and quantity.
I spoke with a local water manager from Greeley, Colorado who is concerned that when a lake is frozen for less time, there's more time for it to evaporate. So there's less water in an already stressed system. Of course, that is a slow change, relatively speaking, if you wanna compare that to something like a wildfire that rips through a large area. So, those changes can be harder to notice, but they are there nonetheless. And the EPA has said that warm, stagnant water is prime conditions for algal blooms. We know that some of those can be toxic to humans and animals. And while water agencies such as this one in Greeley said that they can treat any water, it's just gonna get expensive. That's what their concern is. And they won't be paying for it – consumers will be paying for it. Additional research needs to be done about that, and we're only seeing this start to happen. But what we don't know yet is what those long term trends are going to be and how bad it will be in terms of affecting water quality and quantity.
Brenda: How are people trying to adapt to this?
Brittany: In Grand Lake, I spoke with the organizer and, you know, he told me that in the future, he plans to do the tournament a few weeks later, no big deal, they can definitely adjust. And that's true for Grand Lake for right now. But in other areas such as water quality and quantity, there isn't much you can do except spend more money to treat water. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains the singular thing that we are presently aware of that can slow the trend of ice loss in lakes right now. But there's no short fix for this. Other effects that we see, in addition to those that I mentioned, are transportation. And as someone who lives in a relatively mild climate, I don't think about transportation that much for frozen lakes. But in northern Alaska and in northern Canada, there are a number of communities that are very remote, that are often Indigenous, that become accessible to the outside world when lakes and rivers are frozen over. And so shorter seasons, variable ice seasons means that there is less time for them to access goods and services. And that accessing also comes with higher risk when that ice is unstable.
Brenda: Okay. So, I'm hearing, and when I read the article…And I hope our listeners will check all of this out, and your work writ large. I'm hearing…Okay. Very clearly, greenhouse gas emissions, this is the number one sort of problem in terms of long term how do we stop this. I read a harrowing article in a recent magazine – I think it was Harper’s, it might have been the New Yorker – on permafrost, and how greenhouse emissions have raised these temperatures in particular ways. And it was really complicated, but also broken down. So, okay. I feel like I'm reading this all over the place about all these different places. Why do you think, in your research, why do you think people resist doing the things that they need to do to stop this?
Brittany: That's a great question. I will share an anecdote. While I was researching for this story, I spoke with someone who organizes fishing tournaments, and he told me, you know, oh, we've had a longer ice season in the spring the last few years. And that's all he cared to share. And he said, you know, our season is lengthening. And I shared that information with Sapna Sharma, this researcher who I was largely consulting for this article. And there will absolutely be years where we see trends that are hopeful, right? But the large trend across the northern hemisphere is this loss of ice for lakes. And so yes, this individual who has a deep affection for this activity is absolutely…I understand where one could look at that and say, you know, I see hope here, and well, we had a longer season, so I'm still hanging onto hope. And I get that. There's a mourning that comes with knowing that something that is dear to us might not be there in the way it was for our future. And whether that translates to climate action or climate inaction, you know, that's a personal choice. But I see people resisting some things and I see some mourning in that.
Brenda: Do you think then, when you spoke with those hockey players, that sport is maybe one of the ways that we can wake ourselves up from the slumber, so to speak, and see the material changes that climate change is bringing?
Brittany: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that this is a tiny, tiny story. And, you know, when I started writing this, not all my editors were convinced that this was gonna be, you know, why does this little story matter? But I definitely fought for it and was able to make the case for why this has a big impact. And, you know, just because one tournament gets canceled, again, this is part of a bigger trend. And I think it is the responsibility of journalists to report on trends, because those trends then become history, right? And one hockey player who I spoke with, it was her second year – her name was Rachel Kindsvatter – and she said, yeah, you know, this is an inconvenience, this is no big deal that our tournament is getting pushed. She for her job is a case manager for families who have lost their homes in a wildfire that ravaged the Grand Lake area two years ago or a year and a half ago. And so she understands there are bigger issues at hand. However, she said, you know, give it 10 to 20+ years, and who knows if this tournament could happen,
Brenda: But this year it's going on, and we're happy that you've reported on it and brought the politics of it to our attention. Check out the story by Brittany Peterson: As planet warms, less ice covering North American lakes. It's a really good piece of reporting, and we really appreciate you being on Burn It All Down.
Brittany: Thanks so much, Brenda.
Brenda: Okay. So, we are so excited at Burn It All Down to be joined by David Goldblatt, author of so many books. The one I have in my hand right now is Futebol Nation, but of course there’s The Ball is Round, The Game of Our Lives, et cetera, et cetera. But we're here to talk to him today in his capacity as chair of Football For Future, a not for profit campaigning and organizing organization for sustainable English football. And so we're here today to really address climate change and his recent work and research on that. So, thank you so much for joining us, David.
David: Oh, thank you so much for having me. A pleasure.
Brenda: All right. I'm also sitting here in my office for the first time in a couple years, and I have next to your book EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. And as somebody who, you know, real influenced by this generation of progressives and leftists, and I think you were too, what ultimately made you decide this is my right now main point of organizing and thinking?
David: So, I think there's like a really long, deep story, and then there's a kind of shorter term one. And the longer term one is, back in the day, I actually wrote my PhD in the late eighties and early nineties on sociology and the environment at a time when the climate crisis was rather quaintly referred to as the greenhouse effect. And I ended up writing a book about it. One of the conclusions I drew is I don't think anything really serious is gonna happen until we're in very, very serious trouble. And I don't know where to hang my hat. I don't know how, at that point…I couldn't see a way for myself into that conversation to be a sort of active part of that struggle. And I kind of left it in a way to one side and started writing about globalization and global history, which took me eventually to football.
But that thought, and that issue, the profundity of the climate crisis has been kind of with me for 30 years. And I suppose what got me circling back was writing the conclusion of The Ball Is Round, where I was trying to think, like, why is football so popular? I mean, just like, not just popular, but such an extraordinary cultural weight placed upon it. And of course, you know, it's to do with its conditions of origin, of Anglophilia and the reach of the British empire in the 19th century. It's about just what an amazing game it is to play. It’s a game of flow and speed and flexibility, and so on. But I did wonder, is there something here, you know, in the 21st century, that sort of takes it as we say in sport to another level?
And it did occur to me that, you know, at heart, football is kind of very particular relationship with chaos and uncertainty. It's a game that's so much about reactivity and about facing uncertainty and dealing with that. And I wondered, is this an avatar of something deeper in the kind of global collective consciousness here? Because that sure as hell is humanity's collective fate right now. And so it's kind of gnawed away at me. Where do I take this? How does this connect? And I suppose over 2018, 2019, again, I sort of finished writing my last book, The Age of Football, and again found myself returning to the climate crisis. I dunno if you remember the medal ceremony at the of the final of the 2018 World Cup, where that incredible rainstorm occurs, and only Putin gets an umbrella and everybody else is soaked to the skin. [laughs] And you know, given what's going on today, how that looks in retrospect.
And again, I just thought, this is climate, this is crazy stuff. So, I started writing about it and researching it through sort of 2019. And you know, over the summer of 2019, it was unbelievable heat waves in Europe and North America. A lot of horse racing, triathlons canceled. The Women's World Cup in France, my god, it was amazing, but I was absolutely beyond baking, the point where you start to think this is dangerous physiologically for athletes performing in this kind of heat. And I continued to work on it and then the pandemic struck, and it just occurred to me, okay, sports stopped for a moment. You know, if people are not getting the message that you really need to listen to the scientists, that you need to prepare for stuff that's coming your way, you know, we'll never get this message across.
So it became my little lockdown project. And I got some support from Play the Game in Denmark and the Rapid Transition Alliance, a network and think tank in the UK, and and put together Playing against the clock. And that was about bringing together all of the staff that had already been published, which is not a lot, and trying to add a little of my own stuff, and to try and think about it, think about the issue more explicitly, politically, about, okay, we know there's a lot of work done on how the climate crisis is gonna impact on football and gonna impact on sport. And there's a fair bit of work on how it's contributing to the problem. But like, politically, how can we mobilize this to deal with the climate crisis? So that's a big, long journey, but it's been an interesting moment to do it. I don't think anything I've ever done has put more traffic in my inbox.
Brenda: So, traffic in your inbox with climate change deniers? Traffic with supporters for your work? What kind of traffic are we talking about?
David: People want articles, people want to do a podcast. I ended up connecting on LinkedIn with Elliot and Barney who have co-founded Football For Future. It's the first NGO in English football to be calling for carbon zero, environmentally sustainable football in this country. And couple of weeks ago I was in an online conversation, a big zoom meeting where people from all over the world who started finding that football/sport climate crisis connection gathered online. It was really amazing. There are people in Germany working on this, in Greece, in Uganda. So, it's really exciting. There's a lot of people there. And I get a lot of interest from broadcasters. I mean, that's been something really interesting here in the UK, is that the main sports broadcasters are taking this very seriously, both in terms of their own carbon footprint and their own kind of economic activity, you know, what they're putting out, how they approach these stories, what they cover. And there's a lot of interest.
Brenda: So, in your work, you’re dealing both with the ways in which football is being impacted by climate change and the way in which it's perpetuating damage to the environment. But let's start with the first one. Where are the crises points right now for football?
David: So, just recently, Storm Eunice, which is a big Atlantic storm, hit the UK and the North Sea coast of Europe, and across Northern England eight amateur grassroots clubs had their stadiums flooded with huge economic impact. That's really serious when you’re lower down the pyramid. And Storm Eunice was big, but it wasn't that big. There's more to come. Den Haag’s stadium, which was caught in the fiercest of the winds, actually had pieces of it blown off. I dunno if you recall, last year there were major floods in the Netherlands and Belgium and Germany, and the German national Olympic committee estimates a hundred million euros worth of damage to sports facilities, grassroots sports facilities – not to mention the Königssee, which is like the first artificial bobsled track built in that part of the world. Like, the Maracanã of bobsleigh, destroyed. So, it’s happening right now. And longer term, there's a lot of serious stuff coming down the line.
The physiology of heat issues is that once you start playing at over 35 degrees centigrade (95 Fahrenheit) there's trouble. And anything into the high thirties and forties, you know, we're talking real medical emergency. And there are going to be a lot more days in a lot more places around the world where currently people are playing football, both grassroots and professional, and they're suddenly gonna be facing those conditions. And the humidity that is coming as well in many parts of the world. I mean, it's dangerous. And we're all seeing this stuff at sporting events. I mean, in 2014, the heat wave of the Australian tennis open saw a thousand members of the audience have medical treatment. I mean, it occurred to me last summer when I was watching…I think it was like semifinals of the Euros? And I thought, oh wow. In five years we'll be doing the men's World Cup in North America. And this'll be like the quarterfinals maybe, and Seattle will probably be hosting one of those. And what's the temperature in Seattle today? 43.6 degrees centigrade (110.5 Fahrenheit).
One of these days, a big tournament is, you know, just gonna have to cancel. It's just gonna be impossible. And as for playing, you know, pick up soccer in Nigeria, or Ghana, in the daytime, 30 years hence...I do wonder what that's gonna be like. So, that's all an issue. Then you've got, you know, flooding and extreme weather and sea level rises. And certainly here in England, we have a lot of coastal stadiums. I mean, I would say probably most of the stadiums of the world are in coastal cities. And from the, you know, almost back of the envelope research that I've done, but I think it stands up. By 2050 on current projections, a quarter of all the professional stadiums in England will be under annual threat of substantial flooding or indeed be underwater. You know, Grimsby Town and Scunthorpe on the North Sea, they might have to think about taking up water polo.
And you know, this is also not just little clubs. This will be big clubs. I mean, Fulham got flooded about two months ago. The club shop actually got flooded, but you know, there's worse and more of that to come. Chelsea, West Ham, all in dangerous flooding zones. And then just generally, more extreme weather, more rain, very bad for grassroots football played outside if you're playing on grass. And of course it depends where in the world you are. Like in Indonesia, they're building a huge national stadium in Jakarta, 80,000, 90,000, you know, great. Indonesia needs a great stadium. I get it. But all the predictions are that it's going to be underwater by 2050. So, yeah. And this is before we get to drought.
Brenda: Bleak, bleak stuff. And I just wanna bring it back again to say, okay, so, for a lot of people…I mean, I remember being in Chile, which is really one of the places that has felt air quality problems with climate change for decades now and the bubble of crisis for a very long time, making it almost impossible for working class people to exercise. Whereas the wealthy people live further up. And so literally they're breathing different air. To bring it back to EP Thompson, what kinds of inequalities do we see in the…Of course it affects all of us, but I have to think it's affecting the poorest among us the most.
David: Sure. I mean, the climate crisis, it strikes me across the board deepens preexisting inequalities under current circumstances. And you know, where it's really gonna hit, I think, as I say, in the Global South. I mean, nearly all the debate around the climate crisis and sport at the moment is happening in the Global North, you know, amongst the big international organizations. There's a conversation going on in Germany and North America, in Britain, in part other parts of Europe, Japan. But that conversation is absolutely not going on in the Global South. And it really needs to be. Research is not being done there either. But look at the Caribbean. I mean, a number of its major cricket facilities have been just turned to matchsticks by a hurricane, and there's more hurricanes to come in the Caribbean in the next 20 years.
So, I think that's the major inequality. I think that in terms of, you know, grassroots and professional, again, all the the focus at the moment is on dealing with professional sports. And there's a lot to be said for, you know…The messaging potential is very, very big, but we are not thinking about our grassroots facilities very much. Certainly not here in England. I'm getting, you know, the beginnings in Germany, I saw that the German football association has created a small fund for grassroots clubs for amelioration for climate crisis issues. So, better drainage, you know, being able to deal with flash flooding so you don't lose half of your season. I think we're gonna need a lot more than that, and we're gonna need a kind of Global North-South transfer mechanism as well to be dealing with this.
Brenda: And so that brings me to the second part of your work, which has been talking about the ways in which football has perpetuated this damage. What are the major ways in which it’s contributing to this crisis?
David: I mean, again, this is back of the envelope figures, but you know, the global sports industry is worth – if you exclude sportswear and gambling, which, you know, I think are ancillary industries – but anyway it's estimated somewhere in the region of 500, 700 billion dollars a year. That's like 0.8% of global GDP. So, I'm thinking per unit of GDP, sport is producing less carbon than the concrete industry, but probably more than certain other industries. So let's just say it's the global average on these things. That's like 0.8% of global emissions. And football's like probably half of that, I would guess. You know, I think that's the right order of magnitude. So we're talking a small nation state, I mean, 0.8% of global emissions is like Poland or Spain. No one's giving them a pass. So, football generates through all kinds of consumption and construction, transport, a lot of transport. I mean, going to games, eating food, building stadiums, pouring concrete. Lot of plastic, lot of oil. So at that level, football, like every entertainment, cultural institution, you know, everybody's got a carbon footprint. Sure as hell in the Global North you've got a carbon footprint. And every single institution has gotta make changes. It's not just football in that regard. Football's nothing special. Every kind of institution is gonna have to go through these changes.
I mean, football is also, certainly in the last decade or so, been a real vehicle for the fossil fuel industry to advertise and normalize itself. And they have been welcomed with open arms. You know, Gazprom obviously has been a sponsor of FIFA, of UEFA, of Chelsea, of Schalke in Germany for like over a decade, very intimate relationship; and Red Star Belgrade, stopping them from going bankrupt at one point, at the same time as purchasing a chunk of the Serbian national oil company. But you know, it's not just Gazprom. SOCAR, the national oil industry of Azerbaijan, has been a shirt sponsor of Atlético Madrid and a sponsor of UEFA. So, in both of those senses, you know, football clearly has now some responsibilities. But I think particularly so because football could actually make a really significant difference. I think football as a kind of virtual for this kind of cultural politics is so potent, and I think peculiarly well suited to the politics of climate change. But of course, you know, before one can speak to anybody else, you gotta put your own house in order.
Brenda: Yeah, it's amazing to me how many years we've been studying global football’s politics, and we still love it at all. [laughter] But we do, don't we? I mean, we're still hoping to use it to…I mean, even if the most jaded among us – and I'm speaking of myself – feel a tremendous passion and love for such a sport then, I mean, it does feel like it has the potential to do great things still, you know? Who’s doing the right thing right now?
David: You know, football is part of the United Nation’s sport for climate action framework, which is a voluntary agreement established by the IOC, UEFA, FIFA primarily, with the UN, whose members after COP26 in Glasgow last year are pledging for carbon zero, basically, by 2040, and halving their carbon emissions by 2030. There's a debate about how they're measuring it a whether they're being checked on and all of the usual problems with voluntaristic international treaties. But it's a major thing. And significant numbers of football clubs have signed up: both the New York clubs in the States, I think LAFC and Galaxy have signed up. Here in the Premier League: South Hampton, Liverpool, Tottenham, and Arsenal. I think others are following. Quite a lot of German clubs, inevitably. And all of those clubs and football associations and federations are in the process of making some of those changes. We'll see how they go.
I think you're getting some really serious commitments and really serious action amongst the tournaments. So, Euro 2024 in Germany and World Cup 2022 in Qatar have to my eye the most comprehensive, the most ambitious, the most serious environmental policies that any tournaments have ever had. I mean, the Olympics have great policies, but of course it's all completely farcical because the IOC has no control over anything once it awards the hosting rights. But in the case of these football tournaments actually I think we're in different territory. Paradoxically, Qatar, which of course is the most hydrocarbon-drenched World Cup ever, in classic Qatari style, it's like we're gonna have an environment policy, we're gonna have a seven star environment policy. And in terms of offsets, waste management, energy production, et cetera, you have to consider it on paper. And from what I can see, pretty exemplary.
So that's beginning the process, and there will be more. And then, you know, the leading clubs are beginning to make the changes. They're switching their energy supplies to renewable. It's pretty simple things to do. It's like, stop buying carbon based energy, you know? They're switching their own transport fleets to electric cars. They're installing LED lighting for their floodlights. Arsenal have covered the Emirates with solar panels and installed a large lithium battery. So, all of that big infrastructure stuff, you know? Forest Green Rovers, who are the kind of leading force in English football down in the fourth level, but hopefully being promoted this season, you know, they're building the first wooden stadium in England, since like literally the late 19th century. So we're gonna have a carbon zero, concrete-free football stadium. And there are others. Real Betis are doing some good stuff. Wolfsburg, you know, there's probably a dozen clubs that to making more serious initiatives.
I think we're beginning to see the early stages of athlete activism in this space. I mean, I think other sports, you know, particularly like the rowers and the surfers and the sailors have all been much more on this, and the athlete organizations like Champions for Earth here in the UK, EcoAthletes in the States, FrontRunners in Australasia doing really good work, and we're beginning to see the first football players join them. So, here in England, you know, Katie Rood who plays for Southhampton and New Zealand is an ambassador for Football For Future. And David Wheeler who plays at Wycombe Wanderers has joined in. But you know, we’re also seeing Hector Bellerín last year, you know, was putting up…Every time Arsenal scored, he was putting money towards reforestation projects, and he actually bought shares in Forest Green Rovers. And I think, without wanting to be too cheesy about it, you know, athletes, whatever their privilege and whatever bubble they're in, are young people. And young people in this world, however tough the screens, cannot but be existentially and profoundly shaped by the thought of what is going on.
It will come. We will find our Marcus Rashford in the climate movement in the world of football. And I dunno where he or she is, but they're out there. And of course it'll be more than one. I mean, it's a movement thing. But I think that will happen. And you know, we're seeing a lot of veganism and people exploring sort of normalizing veganism for athletes. Chris Smalling playing at Roma, very big on that, for example. So I think we're seeing that. We’re beginning to see a few fan related things, you know, individual club missions. So you've got, you know, groups calling for more sustainable stadium practice over like single use plastics and food and so on at Burnley – most surprising, given what much of Burnley's fan base is like – and at Huddersfield. So that's changed. And also like the fan organizations in Europe, like Supporters Direct, the football supporters association in Scotland and here in England, are beginning like, okay, this is something we need to engage with. You know, a whole bunch of small NGOs are kind of emerging, campaigning around these issues.
So, there is the emergence of a movement. And I mean, the peak – again, as ever, bless Germany. When the German fan groups organized their big reform proposals for German football in 2020, you know, huge network, 3000 groups, exercising consultative democracy, et cetera. One of the things they called for was, alongside annual financial auditing, was annual environmental auditing of football clubs. And the Bundesliga have taking that on. And that's gonna happen now every year. I mean, what the rules are is another matter. But you know, it's beginning. And I'm just, after a very long time, you know, like, football, climate crisis, what's the connection? Suddenly there is a lot, lot more in energy, and people are making the connections all the time. I'm not one for optimism generally, but I occasionally allow myself a minuscule little droplet.
Brenda: [laughs] Well, I feel fortunate to have been present for such a moment for you, David, and I'll try to follow your lead. Okay. So, Green Rovers, what are the parallels in the US to them? Who are they?
David: You know, some of the big clubs are beginning to take this seriously – LAFC, the Galaxy, the New York clubs. I think you've got something really interesting going on at the new stadium in Seattle, where…I was a little skeptical when I first read about it, but having now engaged a little, I think it’s a really interesting experiment and really how to build a sustainable stadium, not just in terms of initial construction, but how they're running it, you know, with an institution big enough and powerful enough that they can turn around to PepsiCo and Coors beer and say, you cannot carry on with single use plastics. You gotta change. How are we gonna do that? And there aren't many people who can kind of, you know, put that pressure on. So I think that’s an interesting thing.
And now down in the fourth level of US soccer in the home of Bernie, in Burlington, Vermont, we have Vermont Green, whose owners have committed them not just actually to environmental sustainability, but to environmental justice and with a kind of sense of environmental justice that is, you know, true to the whole kind of racial justice roots of that debate in the US. And I mean, I have to say, you know, it's not quite Naomi Klein writing the PR for Vermont Green, but it's not a billion miles away. So I think, you know, we'll see where they go, and we'll see how serious they are. But I think that's an exciting prospect.
Brenda: So, let me ask you, why do you think football is particularly positioned to take on this crisis?
David: I think the climate crisis requires pretty much universal levels of engagement. Everybody is crew on this one. And I don't know anything that reaches more people in more places across more demographics than football. There's just, nothing comes close. And you know, certainly here in Europe, it gets to constituencies who are really not interested and really not engaging in the conversation. I think the second thing is that in a world where trust levels of elites are in decline, you know, people don't believe scientists – like, really!? But that's where we are. But they do unbelievably listen to their football clubs and take the pronouncements of football institutions somehow as more like epistemologically valid. I'm not sure it's a good thing, but we work with what we've got, and the possibility of football normalizing and shaping the conversation, pushing the deniers, the conspiracy theorists, all of that what-about-ery that goes on and is such an impediment to the climate movement.
I think football has the opportunity, if it really cleans its act up and speaks in that voice, to cut that all dead. And then we're having a different conversation about like, okay, how are we gonna do this together? And that's what football above all is great for. I think certainly –I’m speaking here for England, but I think it applies to other places – it’s one of the few zones where people still believe that collective action actually works. You know, after 40 years of deep immersion in neoliberalism and consumer capitalism, people have lost that. And I think in football people really, in their guts and not in a reflective, but like in an in your guts way, team matters. You can raise your game collectively to meet a challenge. And that is a very precious cultural sorts, and rare. And if that could be applied to the logic of the climate crisis, I think some very powerful messaging and action could follow from it.
And the last thing is hope. I mean, It's a bit cheesy, but you know, dealing with the climate crisis requires some hope, that we haven't started too late, that we haven't entirely fucked it up. We can actually make a difference. And football is a place people still believe in hope and people still believe in the possibility of the last minute turnaround. You know, I mean, that's like narrative heart of football, is you play to the whistle. You’re 3-0 down in extra time, it doesn't matter. You can still always come back. And that is true of other…You know, football has no monopoly on these kind of emotional narratives. But whoa, it's reaching a lot of people at a kind of gut level that very little else can reach. So I think, you know, that's a very potent cocktail to be mobilized.
Brenda: Yes. And we had a show recently with the Independent Supporters Council here in the US and, you know, they are far from being co-opted by their football clubs. They're a very progressive group and they have a lot to say on this issue. So, I think you're right, that there are things happening that can be capitalized on – [laughs] LOL – for 2026, right? I mean, we've got an opportunity in the US, in Canada and in Mexico to, you know…Kissinger’s on the committee, so that is a little…
David: [laughs] That’s a guarantee of good things.
Brenda: Right? I mean, we know that there's problems off the bat, not to mix my sports metaphors. But there are a lot of people who are excited about trying to show the most progressive sides of US supporter culture, and of course environmental justice is a great piece of that. So, I think that's really exciting that you found those examples there.
David: And there's a lot of easy wins, like, simple, simple stuff: transport, you know, somewhere to park your bike, more plant based food offerings. And actually, it would be a relief. I mean, I dunno about you, Brenda, but I've reached the point in the US where I've realized it's basically better to go hungry in the stadium than to eat. [Brenda laughs] You know, the only thing I can eat at American sport is marijuana candies when I go to baseball games. That's completely essential and improves things, let me tell you! By the third innings, things are interesting.
Brenda: [laughs] It feels sped up after that. Baseball feels like it has a normal pace at that moment.
David: Maybe I've just like slowed down a little.
Brenda: That’s what I mean.
David: I’ve come down to baseball speed.
Brenda: Totally. No. I mean, as a lifelong vegetarian, stadiums are, you know, nightmares, culinarily speaking.
David: And it need and be. I mean, honestly the best food I've ever had in a stadium is in Israel, where I had falafel and hummus and salad and the little fine crispy fries inside the wrap.
Brenda: Yum. I have no qualms with that. I would be happy to replace everything with that. That's a very good prospect. Well, David Goldblatt, thank you so much for your time and your expertise and sharing it with us this week on Burn It All Down. We really appreciate it.
David: Oh, it's been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much. Really good fun. Thank you.
Brenda: That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Listen, subscribe, and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you, thank you, thank you to our patrons. Your support means the world. We think about you every week and the fact that it enables us to do this show. If you wanna become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. I'm Brenda Elsey, on behalf of Burn It All Down, burn on and not out.