{"id":25273,"date":"2022-12-10T17:34:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T17:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/winter-sports-climate-paradox-speech\/"},"modified":"2022-12-10T17:34:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-10T17:34:52","slug":"winter-sports-climate-paradox-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/winter-sports-climate-paradox-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter sports’ climate paradox – Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The whole of Ski-Norway is constantly talking about recruitment for cross-country skiing and a possible change to the sport to make it more interesting. But no one talks about the biggest problem: climate change. What makes the snow disappear and the basis for the whole sport as well. As a top athlete, you often have 250 travel days a year. The calendar also shows that the athletes, with their entire corps, travel an unnecessary amount back and forth: The travel calendar for the cross-country elite looks like this: Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Christmas holiday, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Italy, France, Italy, Slovenia, Norway, Sweden , Estonia and back to Finland. And for the alpine elite, it looks like this. Here the men and women do not travel to the same place at the same time: For men: Austria, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, USA, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, USA, Slovenia and Andorra. For women: Austria, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, USA, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, France, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Andorra. With the whole apparatus surrounding the sports profiles, and with supporters and media in addition, there will be many people who travel around the world. Skiing is big business and a lot of CO\u2082 emissions. And it is not just travel that contributes to an increased climate footprint. The sport, with the athletes at the forefront, also contributes strongly to consumption. Our skiing heroes advertise everything from oil, cars, trucks, banks and snowmobiles, to woolen clothing, water and fitness watches. The sponsor brands light up on skis, poles, gloves, drink bottles and clothing. There is hardly a square centimeter that is not covered by advertising. And as the winners cross the finish line, the equipment is shown to the photographers, so we can all see what the best are using. The sponsors do not spit money into the sport to be nice. They want something in return for it. And believe me, sponsoring ski stars brings money to the coffers. The greater the emissions, the less snow in the future. The snow which, by the way, is becoming more and more artificial. In Norway, we already start in the summer to produce snow for the coming winter season. The reason is simple; the climate is changing. Bod\u00f8 has 48 fewer winter days in the last 30 years, compared to the 30 years before that again. In Southern and Western Norway, winter is only a vague memory. Between 1961-1990, Kristiansand had 83 winter days, according to the Meteorological Institute. Between 1991-2020, the southern village had none. Winter days are considered days when the temperature has been below 0 degrees. But instead of asking the sports stars questions about their climate footprint, we allow ourselves to be fascinated by them. Johannes H\u00f8sflot Kl\u00e6bo, for example, is a role model with healthy values \u200b\u200bwho dares to take the fight, but only as long as it does not come at the expense of personal sponsors. Earlier this autumn, we could read that the national cross-country coach, Eirik Myhr Nossum, is so worried about the lack of snow in Norway that they traveled to Finland to train. There is still snow to be found early in the season. This time without Kl\u00e6bo. He traveled alone to the heights of Livigno. Although our sports stars, with all their travel, release large amounts of CO\u2082, we never hear reflections about this. And that’s weird. For those of us who watch winter sports, we see that there are big changes. There are artificial snow tracks, where the forest and surroundings are otherwise completely free of snow. In many places, the events also have to be moved due to a lack of snow. Before the season opening at Sjusj\u00f8en in November, 100 truckloads of artificial snow were driven to fill the slopes. For me this is a big paradox. We will cheer for our heroes. But at the same time, we must imitate the top sport in the field where it is most sinned. In Norway we have Morten Thorsby. The footballer, as with his non-profit organization We play green, tries to do something about both his own and others’ climate footprint. Since football is a much bigger sport than cross-country skiing, emissions are a much bigger problem here. That is why one of the world’s best footballers, Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, receives deserved criticism when he snorts and laughs away critical questions about the use of private planes. Thorsby, on the other hand, receives international praise for his commitment. Football does not depend on winter, quite the opposite. But the soil depends on the different seasons. And especially the heroes of winter sports depend on it. It is their livelihood. Winter sports simply need climate ambassadors like Morten Thorsby. Rather than worrying about recruitment, the athletes should rather worry about whether it is even possible to go skiing in the future. And here both FIS, the athletes, the surrounding apparatus and the sponsors have a special responsibility. Look at the entire calendar, set up the World Cup so that there is as little travel as possible. In 2018, transport accounted for 25 per cent of the EU’s total climate emissions. By 2050, emissions must be reduced by 90 per cent. It cannot be done if everyone flies criss-crossing the globe several times each year. Without snow, they have nothing. We need ski stars who try to have as small a climate footprint as possible, ski stars who stand out as solid role models. We don’t need stars who fly private jets and front the sale of goods, which are down-sauced by sponsors who are only concerned with consumption and money. Now the winter athletes have to work very hard for their own livelihood, for the young people who will carry the winter sport forward. And paradoxically, the solution may be to become less popular.
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The whole of Ski-Norway is constantly talking about recruitment for cross-country skiing and a possible change to the sport to make it more interesting. But no one talks about the biggest problem: climate change. What makes the snow disappear and the basis for the whole sport as well. As a top athlete, you often have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[531,4670,271,22,2083],"class_list":["post-25273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-climate","tag-paradox","tag-speech","tag-sports","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}