While the Winter Olympics officially began on February 4, many voices were raised to denounce its dramatic impact, both socially and environmentally. Some athletes, like the French kayaker Sarah Guyot and her annual carbon budget of 21 tons, question the model of the career of a high-level athlete. Personalities such as the influencer and journalist Thomas Wagner are speaking out and challenging civil society, while for the first time, states such as the United States, Australia and Canada are instituting a diplomatic boycott.
Can we continue to think of sport in the same way? Can we continue to demand drastic efforts from companies, governments and civil society, while a handful of sportsmen and women, often excessively rich, emit a staggering amount of carbon into the atmosphere?
If the tradition of gathering athletes from all over the world to make them compete in a sport competition is undeniably beautiful, it seems that the Beijing Games are a strong symbol, and constitute the beginning of a questioning as for the sustainability of our models.
In order to allow them to be held, experts estimate that up to five hundred million gallons of water have been necessary, diverted from surrounding farms and cities, while the region is already suffering from water shortages. The production of artificial snow, apart from its tremendous amount of water and energy consumption, also has a strong impact on ecosystems, destroying vegetation, and promoting soil erosion, as the ski slopes created cross the Songshan Nature Reserve.
The authorities defend themselves by saying that the infrastructures built for the occasion will be sustainable, but what about the geographical choice of the Beijing region, especially known for its arid climate? What will be the consequences of the development of such an activity if global warming guarantees the non-existence of snow in the long term?
However, as always, the Chinese authorities boast that the Olympic Games will be "the greenest in history", even though they are using existing sites. Massive investments have also been made in the use of renewable energy, hydrogen-powered vehicles, and carbon offset initiatives have been carried out.
However, without denying the "it's better than nothing", there is a great collective risk in reading this information if it convinces people that this activity is socially and environmentally acceptable, or even inexpensive. In particular, it overlooks the fact that the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions associated with sports competitions come from athlete and spectator travel, transportation and consumption. Thus, even though Beijing has exceptionally limited the presence of foreign spectators because of Covid, the problem is not solved in the longer term.
The social issue must also be on our minds. The internment and exploitation of Uyghurs has of course motivated the diplomatic boycott of some diplomatic powers. What about the World Cup in Qatar at the end of the year? What stronger symbol of inequality than to have footballers paid several hundred thousand euros per month play in stadiums built by workers earning one euro per month, among whom 6,500 have died on the construction sites?
Society would then be entitled to question this model. It is perhaps not certain that a top athlete can benefit from unlimited carbon credits while earning several hundred times more money than a doctor, a farmer or a teacher.
Jeanne de Pommereau
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