The argument for a permanent Olympic City
popsci.com
popsci.com
I believe a number of locals are excited about that. Getting to be that intimately involved in everything the Olympics offers is a unique experience.
That said, if it came here every four years, the novelty would be gone and the harsh realities would set in. It would be great for tourism-related businesses but quality of life for locals would suffer.
Perhaps the Summer Olympics could find a permanent home. I am not sure any one locale would want to perpetually host the Winter Olympics -- outside of those who believe they could build wealth upon it. It would start destroying the very reason you want to live in the mountains.
Perhaps they would take water from others “for this higher purpose” but it doesn’t change the fact that there isn’t enough water.
I’d love the Olympics in SLC in 2030 or 2034 but would support finding a place where the winter will remain for a while.
The amount of politiking about where to host the winter olympics would be insane.
And with global warming I am not sure we could guarantee winter weather for the next 30 years anywhere on earth. Svalbard might be a place (and it is very nicely international).
SLC is a no-brainer for winter sports, I’m not sure if it’s still the case but olympic athletes used to also attend Westminster for free too, so a lot of athletes lived there year round anyway.
What if it happened once every 12-20 years? I read an article a few years ago (can't find it) that proposed that the Summer Olympics would be hosted on a permanent rotating schedule of 3-5 cities, and likewise, 3-5 different ones for the Winter Olympics (Salt Lake being one of them).
The cost to rebuild infrastructure may be more at one time, as every 12 years (likely 3-4 years before the event) there would be a push to upgrade facilities, but I think that could be planned for.
That is an interesting idea.
This article wasn't proofread as there were no 2021 London Olympics.
BTW, the Olympics is meant to showcase the city/country that the event is in for that particular Games. It has knock on effect for tourism, economic impact and the like.
Yearly global CO2 emissions are at 31Gt. This article is complaining because the Olympics adds 0.0004Gt -> 0.003Gt?
I dislike this part of the green movement. Absolutely it's important to cut down CO2 emissions. However, worrying about the emissions of a sporting event, even a really big one, is really just asinine.
The fossil fuel industry used solar to attack nuclear back in the day. I'm pretty suspicious that a lot of that is happening today. Distract with minor issues while the big ones go unaddressed.
I'm not saying this particular argument has any merit, mind you. Just that it's legitimate to care about smaller sources of pollution if the effort required to eliminate them is proportionately smaller.
I do agree though, it does seem to have significant overlap with the idea that replacing plastic straws will save the ... something (?) ...
Human activity of every kind is going to have environmental impacts of some variety, and part of that impact will increase atmospheric carbon dioxide. Given that there are now more people alive today than at any other point in history, seriously, every single day we’re breaking that record, human activity will remain high, and so will our environmental impact projected out into the future. When there are more deaths than births on a consistent basis, environmental measurements will be lagging indicators of a decrease in human activity.
That does not mean we have to depend on combustible hydrocarbons in order to continue or advance our industry, if the concern is actually carbon dioxide, but we are almost entirely unwilling to build the one kind of power plant that would short circuit our carbon dioxide output in the shortest amount of time: nuclear plants.
Instead we spend our time and waste our energy arguing about consumer uses of energy rather than how we can produce more or the same amount of energy with less carbon dioxide output because at the end of the day it always comes down to: how can we control our neighbors and make them live down to or below our standards?
But what makes it so confounding is it's also a political problem: people get to decide for themselves whether to do those reactions, and they overwhelmingly choose to do them.
Their choices are informed by all kinds of social, emotional and symbolic influences - one of which is the Olympics. While the Olympics may not be a huge event relative to the entire global economy, it is pretty big relative to the entire global mindshare.
You could say "Ok, it's the consumers responsibility to vote with their wallet!" But that doesn't mean anything. How can I impact agricultural CO2 emissions at the grocery store? There's not label on the food goods which says "This is a high CO2 emission product". And even if I did that, how can you expect the general population to do the same? We can't even convince the general population that wearing a mask to slow the spread of a respiratory illness is a good idea. We can't even convince everyone that a vaccine doesn't "magnetize" you.
What's worse, this sort of thing would very likely backfire. Sure, everyone that thinks climate change is an issue will say it's a good to ok move. However, those in deep denial about climate change, the 40% of the population we need to convince it is a problem, will see a move like this as being "liberal cancel culture gone mad!"
If I'm going to poke the outrage machine, I'd rather poke it with measures that are effective at addressing climate change. Carbon taxes and subsidies for green tech and farming.
You mean the companies that consumers outsource their pollution to?
There actually are, though. Think of how much plastic stuff is packaged in in the US, compared to Europe; there's no way to “vote with your wallet” out of that situation.
Can you give an example of a case where this has actually happened? (i.e. an issue that isn't useful as a populism wedge gets solved because people care about it)
The way you write your post suggests that that's an impossibility.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed...
Although to be fair, most of the multi-sport athletes complete in closely-related sports (which would likely be held in the same location) or are from the old days when tug-of-war was an Olympic sport.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester_Ledeck%C3%A1
Obviously those aren't as different as swimming and handball though.
Honestly, I don't think the idea of splitting the Olympics over several sites is a bad one. The advantages (less construction at each site, more ideal conditions for each sport) might outweigh the disadvantages (less opportunity for multi-sport athletes, less interaction between athletes from different sports). I always like seeing the USA men's basketball team show up to watch the USA swimmers, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if that tradition doesn't continue.
While mountain air is often cleaner, I think sea level would be most appropriate, again for the fastest times for most events. Very short sprints (100m dash, for example) are faster at high altitudes. The lower oxygen content negatively affects medium and long distance events but the lower atmospheric drag more than compensates for short sprints.
Perhaps you could hold it somewhere like California, Taiwan, Oman, or Alaska, where there are high mountains very close to the coast. That way you could hold events at whatever altitude is most optimal for performance, while minimizing travel distance between the venues.
Anchorage seems like a fine choice at first. Great air quality but not so pristine that the infrastructure would ruin an unspoiled area. There are two mountain ranges within a couple-hour drive. However the tallest range (Alaska Range) is in an undeveloped national park so putting infrastructure there could be quite damaging. Also the tallest peak, Denali, is sacred to Native Americans. The Chugach range is much closer to Anchorage and has quite a bit of tourism infrastructure but the peaks are lower - 7,000 to 8,000 ft peaks vs the 11,000 to 20,000 ft of the undeveloped Alaska Range.
While some ski areas, such as Bjelasnica in Sarajevo, were able to meet this requirement by building a raised start structure, there's nowhere in Greece that even comes close.
Also, it keeps bringing up the environmental cost of transporting athletes and trainers to the host location, but obviously that’s the same whether the location is reused or not.
Just kind of dumb, overall.
In recent times it has even become less transparent, like how it awarded the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles without even a proper bid process.
Even for 2032, there is no transparent process, IOC already announced Brisbane as its "preferred host city" even though other cities like Jakarta has prepared serious, viable bids.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bids_for_the_2024_and_2028_S...
I mean getting a favourable mention in the US state of the Union address[0] is also something that would be prestigious for nations, happens every year and is more under US control, so wouldn't that be better?
[0]: When American politicians mention smaller countries it becomes national news in those countries. I doubt the US news spend much time talking about a state visit from Denmark, but Danish news does.