The other side of Formula 1: Barcelona residents protest for race-car exhibition
elnacional.cat
elnacional.cat
I also think that perhaps we are well past the point where we should have stopped burning fossil fuels for entertainment.
If they were so toxic, race tracks would surely not exist or would be so unsustainable they’d go out of business immediately from having to deal with the cleanup.
But this protest was against a demo performance this evening in the city. On a weekday night when people have to work. In a city that prides itself on sustainability and has pedestrianised many streets in recent years.
A lot of people like myself consider F1 to be nothing but a toy for big oil and billionaires with too much money to spend. It's hyper commercialised. I don't want them here either though I didn't protest. I just avoided the area. It's much harder to do if you actually live there though.
If it were so extremely toxic, we’d have heard about it from any of the jurisdictions where there is a racetrack, which there are thousands of around the world. Or one of the cities which already has a F1 circuit, of which there’s dozens.
It simply isn’t anywhere near the problem that GP makes it out to potentially be.
Actually, I'm now also visualizing all the surrounding roads clogged with traffic related to the race. It's not increasing my enthusiasm.
The race track? In the big picture, a rounding error.
One man's entertainment is another's livelihood. It's not like they're burning a barrel of oil for fun...
Am I no longer permitted to drive to the beach, fly somewhere for a holiday, take a boat to scuba dive, take a bus to the snow?
Come to think of it, exercise burns calories and food requires fossil fuel based chemicals and fertilizers and machinery to grow and process. Better not walk, hike, or cycle anywhere unless necessary for me to produce something toward GDP.
Agriculture on the other hand can't be simply abandoned. Powering equipment from non-emitting energy sources is needed.
It does involve burning fossil fuels, and so does exercise because it increases your calorie requirement and food involves burning fossil fuels, so that too? Owning and using computers, phones, and internet does too, so none of that for recreational purposes either?
> Agriculture on the other hand can't be simply abandoned.
Why not?
> Powering equipment from non-emitting energy sources is needed.
It's not just powering equipment, it's petroleum used to create chemicals to grow and plastics and other products to process and create machines (tires, oils, plastic and rubber parts, petroleum based chemicals). And even if you were to "solve" carbon emissions completely, there are still many non-renewable resources being depleted and many pollutants being released, from microplastics to fertilizers and herbicides to toxic chemicals from chip manufacturing.
Define "make sense". I'm genuinely curious how you've arrived here so confidently. If it was climate change being the singular issue and nothing else matters short of actively murdering people, then any and all carbon producing economic activity should be shut down. But you're not going that far, so it seems "productive" economic activity is okay, but recreation is not. So we have to be cogs in the machine, but we can't have fun.
Not sure many would agree with you, or that even you would be able to stick to your own plan.
Formula 1 is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2030 and engines from 2026 will be run on sustainable (ethanol based) fuels. The fleet of trucks to cart them around Europe also now run on biodiesel.
This story has already gained more traction on Hacker News than in Barcelona.
Supporting quietly from home is pretty much the antithesis of one.
A few hundreds protested it. 500 maybe? That’s less than 2% of the 38K that attended it.
Guess we can always get ~2% to protest any event of more than 10K attendees.
Instead of being proud of the accomplishments of Carlos Sainz, a spanish F1 driver?
For what it's worth, it looks like it was only one street that was closed!? Remember that in the past in Spain there have been actual formula 1 races in the streets, in the Valencia (the 2nd biggest spanish city along the Mediterranean sea, after Barcelona)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8VToYhi0REs
These entitled people protesting for everything and anything are just sad.
Being as familiar with motorsports and events like this as I am, I find it terribly hard to believe that a single street was all that was affected, even if the main event was only on one street. Which says nothing of the fact that, you know, that's irrelevant to the protesters issues. Would you maybe like to address their concerns?
> Remember that in the past in Spain there have been actual formula 1 races in the streets, in the Valencia (the 2nd biggest spanish city along the Mediterranean sea, after Barcelona)
Relevance? I suspect the same people would have an issue with that too.
It's... really not. They still have an F1 race in Spain.
Not sure about where do you see the link between entitlement and protesting.
Anyway, I'm from Rome, Italy, and I absolutely hate every time there's marathons, Formula E and stuff and they close large parts of the city.
Formula E especially creates insane bottlenecks and everybody here hates it, thanks god this year they moved out of Rome. Would've not been surprised in protests if it came back again, but not sure where the entitlement would've been.
Even if the rest of what you’re saying is true, the bulk of those 38k watchers will have been visitors to the city. The 500-3k protesting are locals. I think it’s only right that local people have more of a voice in what happens in their city than tourists do, irrespective of how many there are.
Keep in mind cities pay tens of millions of dollars per year to host an F1 race, and they're often locked in for many years.
It reminds me of the realities of being an Olympic host city:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/business/olympics-economi...
In reality? not sure much.
Cities compete for the prestige of hosting the Olympics and not so long ago Brisbane "won" the "content" to host the 2032 summer Olympics.
Guess how many cities submitted a proposal for the prestige of "winning".
One.
It's basically all about buying "prestige" with taxpayer money.
Infamously, FIFA events (World Cups in particular) have been increasingly planned and executed without regard for the wellbeing of the local people and economy. They're hosting one of the upcoming World Cups in (among others) my city, Toronto, and I've rarely been less enthusiastic about a thing in my life.
P.S. Thanks for downvoting someone who is merely expressing his personal opinion and not offending anyone.