The U.S. Olympic team is one of a handful that will supply air conditioners for their athletes at the Paris Games in a move that undercuts organizers’ plans to cut carbon emissions.
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland said Friday that while the U.S. team appreciates efforts aimed at sustainability, the federation would be supplying AC units for what is typically the largest contingent of athletes at the Summer Games.
“As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” Hirshland said. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Britain were among the other countries with plans to bring air conditioners to France.
The world will continue to get hotter year by year until climate change is solved. I’d fully expect to see more AC use, not less. This won’t be limited just to athletes, but it will be limited by affordability.
Big cities already periodically provide “Cooling Centers” to support the large population of working poor who can’t afford the sky high energy bills. I have no idea what rural communities do during a heat-wave induced brown out. Everyone gets in the lake that’s full of industrial agricultural run off? They retreat into the mines, like a bunch of Morlocks? Y’all just fucking die?
But this is entirely unsustainable long term. Either we find a way to keep our large populations cool during the killer hot months or we stop having large populations all together.
We just retreat into the shade of the cornfields and drink sweet tea
Humans ceasing to emit carbon dioxide is inevitable. I reckon this will happen some time before the average global temperature reaches 100 degrees C.
“Humans ceasing to breathe is inevitable”
The athletes who get aircon will also be determined by who comes from a wealthy country. Makes a mockery of the games imo, should disqualify them all for having an unfair advantage.
Economic imbalance is baked into the games.
A runner that trains in a state of the art facility with a nutritionist and physiotherapist on call 24/7 will inherently have an advantage over a runner from a poor country that trains in their spare time at the local high school track. Acting like air conditioning is a step too far is silly.
Taking your own air conditioner and rubbing it in the face of those who can’t afford it, in the olympic village where you’re all supposed to be treated the same, is such a glaring display of economic privilege that i find it bothersome.
I’m always embarrassed by Australia spending a fortune on sport and then congratulating ourselves for winning more medals, especially at the commonwealth games where most of the countries are poor.
Yours is an interesting viewpoint. Should athletic competitions also include heat tolerance?
By France not supplying AC to all the teams, it makes it so the competition does include heat tolerance, but only for nations that can’t afford to bring their own cool air.
You can’t remove individual differences but there ought to be a level playing field at least at the actual competition. Is it acceptable to provide better accommodation to rich countries? White countries? I think at the games everyone should be treated equally.
Climate change will never be solved. It wont even be mitigated.
It will just continue to get worse until it stops being a curiosity the rich invest into solutions (which will never be practical for scale) for positive coverage, and shift their money into their survival plans… Bunkers, Sea Living (under sea or on ships), or space ships to get to lunar colonies or mars.
A small, lucky few of the proletariate might even get selected to be “Saved” along side them, because afterall… the Rich need their menial labor.
And everyone else will suffer and die.