Sport and the Environment

Sport and the Environment: Communication, Politics and Culture in the Age of Climate Crisis confronts a fundamental dilemma. Sport and physical activities are powerful means to communicate the need for action on the global climate crisis and spur environmental awareness among fans, audiences and participants around the world. Yet, these very same activities and spectacles generate their own adverse environmental impacts and are increasingly subject to a range of challenges, including extreme heat, pollution, floods, and shrinking snow and ice cover. This collection confronts that dilemma.

The assembled authors use sport and physical activity to search for answers, all the while knowing that sitting with discomforting tensions is a reality of living with environmental degradation and polycrisis in late capitalism. They respond by critically analysing how environmental problems and challenges are communicated, experienced, represented, contested and, occasionally, lessened as progress is made. The outcome is a volume animated by the urge to understand and act in an effort to realise pro-environmental sensibilities in and through sport.

This book features new, established and distinguished scholarly voices working from different disciplinary perspectives. The chapters cover many topics, including culture wars, citizen science, mega-events, social licence, Indigenous games, greenwashing, environmental activism and animal welfare. The reader is taken from the United Nations to the ice rinks of North America, on to the Olympics and the Southeast Asian Games, and across Australasia and as far south as the remote coasts of Tasmania. Sport and the Environment is of value to anyone wanting to understand the role of sport and physical activity in the age of climate crisis.