Trying Out for Climate Justice: Part 2

If you love football, you should love climate action

Depending on where in the world you live, the impacts of climate change on football may be obvious. “In England in 2014, the average grassroots pitch lost five weeks per season to bad weather, and a third of these pitches lost between two and three months in a season,” according to a 2020 report on the impact of climate change on global sport and vice versa. Climate change means disruptions of this nature will increasingly become more frequent and severe unless we act immediately and rapidly to decarbonize our economy and lifestyles. “Of the 92 league teams in England, 23, almost one in four, can expect partial or total annual flooding of their stadiums by 2050,” the report finds.

We are woefully behind in the sports world when it comes to measuring our impact on the climate. As report author, David Goldblatt, observes, “given how obsessed the world of sport is with counting and statistics, it is remarkable how little counting of carbon has been conducted. The only reasonably thorough and rigorous studies have been commissioned by the IOC, FIFA, and UEFA in relation to the Olympics, the World Cup, and the European Football championships, alongside a small body of work on individual football clubs, the lower leagues of English football and North America’s National Hockey League. However, the carbon emissions of most sports in most countries, and most events and leagues, let alone grassroots sports, are a mystery.” This is an immediate problem sports fans have a significant influence in fixing. There would be no money in sports without you, dear sports consumer. Using your voice and your dollars to call for accountability from your favorite club or league is one of many great first steps off the bench and into the climate game.

The impact of global football on our climate

There is much to say about the “non-profit” governing body of global football. For today’s purpose, let’s consider it as a case study of how even the most deplorable situations and people can have their moments of grace, despite themselves. Yes, FIFA is a nightmare (hello, Qatar!), but they are also one of the few sports institutions on a global scale that’s made a public effort to measure and report on emissions. Ah life, you temperamental beauty, you. The World Cup, including the Confederations Cup and associated events, produces a significant amount of greenhouse gas pollution. The 2010 South Africa World Cup weighed in at 2.75 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. This is more than the 2020 emissions of 80 different countries. This is also almost five times the annual 2020 emissions of Somalia, a country that is experiencing climate impacts exceeding its resources and capability to adapt. As a result, many Somalis have chosen or have been forced to leave, and some have relocated to Vermont in pursuit of a more stable and secure life. Through conversations, we’ve learned that soccer has been a pillar for some of the Somali Bantu community, providing structure, a healthy channel to release some of the pressures and frustrations inherent in being a minority culture in an overwhelmingly white state, and a communal space to build new and strengthen existing relationships in the wider Vermont community. I’ve watched in admiration as their community has built their men’s league club, Juba Stars FC, into a powerhouse locally and regionally. While they’ve grown stronger and more organized as a club, they’ve forced the rest of us to step our game up or risk being embarrassed with a heavy-handed loss, something I’m personally familiar with. Ok, listen, we didn’t have our star keeper that balmy July day, and we tried a new formation we’d never practiced. The wheels pretty much fell off right out the gates. So let’s just agree to never think about that game again and move on.

For Somalis who haven’t emigrated, the situation at home hasn’t gotten any easier. Drought, severe flooding, and extreme and unusual events like Cyclones are now happening almost yearly in the country. Last year alone, cyclones displaced 1.3 million Somalis. The number of internally displaced people has grown to 2.9 million, most of whom live in makeshift settlements under unimaginably difficult conditions. The current drought is deteriorating an already untenable humanitarian crisis, placing 3.2 million Somalis in a life-threatening position. Our global leaders and international emergency response infrastructure must be handling this, right? Wrong. Currently, only 2% of the humanitarian funding needed to avert this ongoing environmental and social catastrophe is being met.

International responses to environmental emergencies like those devastating Somalia are already inadequate. And climate change is driving the increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events that have been repeatedly hitting the Somali people, like Ayan Muude Adawe. Ayan’s four-month-old became sick and died a day after Cyclone Gati dropped two years of rainfall in just a few days, forcing her to flee. This would be the second time she would be forced to relocate, having escaped drought in Ethiopia seven years earlier. These environmental issues push vulnerable people past their ability to cope and force some into extreme survival tactics. The effects of climate change in Somalia are what the U.S. Pentagon has accurately called “threat multipliers,” fueling conflict and the extremism of terrorist groups. The Somali people are not alone in their fight for survival in this vicious cycle. At least 3.3 billion people “are highly vulnerable to climate change” and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, according to a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The vicious cycle of events happening in Somalia, and many other regions around the world, is a clarion call for climate justice.

It’s painful, but it’s past time for us to face it

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced,” wrote the late writer and activist, James Baldwin. I realize the situation faced by the Somali people is not a fun read. But if millions of Somali people have to endure such a fate, we should have the courage to not turn away from their plight. I’ll admit, I’ve casually left news of a crisis on in the background as I’ve gone about my days. I too have averted my eyes and ears because I felt I had to save my energy for what was going on in my personal life. But bearing witness to human suffering, with our full attention, may be what’s necessary to expose that tiny hole in our defenses, and awaken our hearts and minds. Sure, there’s the odd sociopath out there, but for the rest of us, human suffering is revolting. When we don’t run from that feeling, then we begin to understand the remedy to our heartache is not a distraction, cynicism, or defensiveness; the remedy is solidarity, action, and human connection. And unlike some crises, like the war in Ukraine, we are all part of the problem and the solution when it comes to climate change.

Subbing in for climate action

Remember when I told you that 70% of Americans are now very or somewhat worried about global warming, and a majority of us now understand that people in the United States are being harmed by global warming? Now recall that only 8% of us who are worried are active on climate change. As my former college coach would say to me after I coughed up the ball trying to do too much coming out of the back, this is simply not good enough. The thing is, it’s not a huge lift to change these odds. There are many ways to take action on climate change that will get us to where we need to go, we just need everyone to start somewhere. So we have a proposal for you: Vermont Green FC will keep working to address the Club’s carbon footprint in an equitable way, and you take 5 minutes of your time to learn about your carbon footprint and what you can do to reduce it. If you can do that and you’ve still got some good minutes in you, tell us one thing you’re going to immediately do about reducing your emissions. More on this at the end of this post.

Calculating our personal carbon footprints isn’t as complicated as it might sound. There are a number of online personal carbon calculators out there that are credible and helpful, but the one that really spoke to us was the Climate Hero platform. It’s easy to use, takes five minutes, offers practical steps to make immediate carbon emissions reductions, is kid-friendly (Heroes! Villains!), and allows you to offset your emissions with verified carbon offsets. Moreover, we think the platform does a great job educating a general audience on some of the complexities of decarbonizing our lifestyles. Their stance on carbon credits, for example, is aligned with expert guidance, like the GHG Protocol. “Carbon offsetting should never be used as a way to rationalize or perpetuate unsustainable practices. It should only be considered as an option after first calculating and starting to reduce your carbon footprint.” We agree. Importantly, the platform, “make(s) sure that…projects contribute in tangible ways to a region’s social improvement.” Moreover, the offsets they source are certified by the United Nations and the Gold Standard, meaning projects are subjected to the toughest audit requirements available to verify climate benefit and social improvement.

The carbon credit question

It’s important to note there is ongoing debate within the climate justice movement if carbon credits are a just way to transition off of fossil fuels. Certainly, carbon credits are not inherently just. Whether or not the carbon offset project follows principles of justice requires more information about the project and our take is that the details matter. If a project advances social improvements alongside climate benefits and helps bring more people into the movement to fight climate change, there certainly is value. Many carbon offset projects, however, don’t offer enough details to fully understand how and with whom the project was developed, which tells us a lot about the effort made to avoid unintended consequences for frontline communities. We go into detail on climate justice in our winter tryout blog post, but for a quick refresher, here is a non-exhaustive list of climate justice criteria that we consider before buying carbon offsets:

• Verifiably reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
• Developed in collaboration with the local community.
• The local community controls some or all aspects of project development and management.
• Supports local economic development and entrepreneurship.
• If financial assistance is provided, it is appropriately structured to local socio-economic conditions and is non-predatory.
• Reduces living expenses for project participants in the local community.
• Provides clean, renewable, locally controlled, and low-impact energy resources.
• Affords all people, including the poor, women, rural and indigenous peoples, the right to accessible, affordable, and sustainable energy.
• Affords communities dependent on natural resources for their livelihood and cultures the right to own and manage those resources in a sustainable manner.
• Opposes the commodification of nature and its resources.
• Provides opportunities to improve health outcomes in the local community.
• Reduces demand for fossil fuels.

We need to ask these questions of carbon offset providers to drive the future of the carbon markets towards justice.

Sub us in, coach!

Similar to our first open tryout, we’re subbing in alongside you. Here’s what went down at our spring tryout:

• Informed trialists in advance that their involvement contributed to climate justice through the verified carbon credits we would purchase to neutralize their travel emissions.
• Encouraged players to think more sustainably about their travel options and offered to help coordinate carpools and public transportation routes for players who were interested.
• Designed a sustainably sourced tryout tee with the message, “climate justice is social justice.” Not only did they wear the message during the tryout, but took the shirt home with them, spreading the message among their networks and in the community.
• Selected a tryout tee with environmental and social responsibility attributes that reduce carbon emissions and plastic pollution, paid a fair wage to workers, and can be kept out of a landfill by returning the shirt at the end of its useful life to the vendor. The vendor will upcycle the shirt fabric into a new shirt. Don’t be in the one garbage truck every second club. Join the circular club.
• Provided trialists with soccer balls made from recycled plastic bottles.
• Calculated total travel carbon footprint using GHG Protocol guidance and tools, ensuring the highest standard of carbon emissions accounting.
• Promoted a financial accessibility policy through our public communications and directly with trialists. If paying the registration fee was a financial hardship, we removed that barrier to participation.

The results are in

The tryout was another success in our eyes, as we made progress on the sporting side of our club and our mission. So what are we most excited about? Here are our top three:

• Trialists organized two carpools, one took public transportation, and one walked, which resulted in about a quarter of all trialists choosing a smarter and more sustainable travel option, reducing the overall carbon footprint of the tryout, and keeping unnecessary emissions out of our atmosphere.
• The overall travel carbon footprint amounted to less than 1 tonne of carbon emissions according to GHG Protocol-derived carbon accounting.
• We purchased verified carbon credits for 1 tonnes of emissions from a Gold Standard verified project that advances climate justice.

The power of pig manure

We reviewed a host of projects on the Gold Standard registry and selected the Cambodia National Biodigester Program because it met many climate justice priorities. Gold Standard provides details on the shared economic value of a carbon offset project beyond climate benefits. You can check out their methodology here. According to their assessment, improved cooking solutions can have a positive impact on a wide range of environmental and social outcomes. In the case of biogas, investing our dollars in one carbon credit, equivalent to one tonne of CO2 emissions, returns $465 of shared economic value across several United Nations sustainable development priorities: climate action, decent work and economic development, poverty alleviation, good health and wellbeing, reducing demand for firewood and other fossil fuels, and reducing negative impacts to terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity. Many of these priorities align with the climate justice priorities listed in the aforementioned criteria.

Time to sub in

If you’re still reading, you’re more than match fit and we respect how seriously you’ve taken the training. Remember, you can sub in for five minutes, or the full match, but the time is now to get in the game. Here are two things you can do today:

1. Calculate your carbon footprint in five minutes
2. Reduce your footprint with climate pledges

Overtime

Not ready to sub out? You’re an animal and we love that about you. Here are two more things you can do to leave it all on the pitch today.

1. Offset your remaining footprint through the Climate Hero platform. We aren’t making any claims that their portfolio of offsets is perfectly aligned with climate justice criteria, but they have indeed made the effort to source projects that provide social benefits to local communities, which is definitely a step in the right direction. You can read more about their carbon offset projects.
2. Call out your favorite club, league, sports broadcasting platform, or other important stakeholders in the sports industry and ask if they have information on their greenhouse gas emissions and what they’re doing to reduce them. Because this is a team effort, after all, tag us so we can join you! For example, “Hey (favorite club), do you know what your climate impact is? What are you doing to reduce your emissions?” Please feel free to add your personal touch, that you support their efforts, small and large, and this issue is important to you!

The final whistle

You played great out there today – we needed you! For those of you who are still sitting on the sidelines, we’ll be right here ready and waiting for you when that day comes when you feel the call to sub in. Until next time, Go Green!