SoylentNews

canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

The New Weather Institute in the UK and Sweden, as part of the Save Our Snow campaign [badvertising.se] (warning for javascript), has a joint campaign to end fossil sponsorships in sports. The reasoning is that those companies are responsible for the worsening climate disaster resulting in the decreasingly short winters with reduced snowfall and thus harming the very sports which they are sponsoring. Along those lines, the institute has published a report, Dirty Snow: The Snow Thieves 2 report: how a ban on polluter sponsorships in winter sport can help save our snow [newweather.org] (warning for PDF).

Key findings:

• Climate change is an immediate threat to winter sports. On current trends, in mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere winters are expected to continue to shrink by 4.7 days per decade. In a high emission scenario, by the end of the century, that means winter could be as short as 31 days, a single month.¹

• But, winter sports are currently being sponsored by the very companies whose pollution heats the atmosphere, melting the snow and ice they depend on.

• Using a calculation for the known relationship between emissions and snow cover loss, the existing CO₂ emissions of seven polluting winter sports sponsors (Audi, Ford, SAS, Equinor, Aker, Volvo, Preem), presented here as case studies, will melt an area 1,968 square kilometres (km²) of spring snow every year. That is equal to a land surface area 437 times bigger than the ground area used for skiing of Åre, Sweden’s largest ski resort and a potential bidder for the 2030 Winter Olympics; and 195 times bigger than the skiing area of Skicircus Saalbach, one of the world’s largest skiing areas host of the FIS Alpine World Cup Finals 2024.

• But now, this report provides, for the first time, a new, clear formula to calculate the additional CO₂ emissions that will result from any given sponsorship deal.

• We show that, depending on the sponsoring company’s carbon footprint, a sponsorship deal can generate up to 100 kg of CO₂e per sponsored euro.²

• Seven case studies of sponsorship deals with major polluters are presented. Secrecy is a barrier to knowing the size of many sponsorship deals. But one multi- million euro, publicly reported deal between the International Ski & Snowboard Federation (FIS) with car maker Audi we calculate will generate between 103,000–144,000 tonnes CO₂e (equivalent to burning between 238,000 and 333,000 barrels of oil ).³

• In the other cases, and based on reasonable estimates, named companies’ sponsorship deals with snowsport organisations are estimated to generate between 11,500 and 192,000 tonnes of CO₂e each.

• The report concludes that winter sports athletes, organisations and event organisers must take responsibility, end polluting sponsorships, and stop winter sports being used as a billboard by companies whose activities are destroying the sports’ future.

¹ Jiamin Wang, Y.Guan, L. Wu, X. Guan, W. Cai, J. Huang, W. Dong, B. Zhang: Changing lengths of the four seasons by global warming. Geophysical Research Letters, 48. Supporting Information. 19 February 2021. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029 [wiley.com]
² The CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) for a gas is derived by multiplying the weight of the gas by its associated GWP (Global Warming Power).
³ https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator#results [epa.gov]

Tobacco analogies are made. The report ends with a call to cease sponsorship deals with companies that are major drivers of climate change, pointing in particular at oil and gas companies, manufacturers of fossil-fueled cars, and airlines.

A lot of places have already had to shorten or even move their winter sports seasons due to lack of one-abundant snow.

Original Submission