Goodness. Sometimes this dashing (lovely?) sportswriter must resort to reeeally stretching to make a sports-environment connection; sometimes, the eco-athletics news springs up faster than you can, um, [insert your sports analogy of choice here].
This article is about summed up in a quote from Aspen Skiing Co. President Pat O’Donnell: “[Climate change] is the most pressing issue facing the ski industry today.” Sorry, IHT: That’s old news. But certainly the most current indicator of winter-sport trouble is the disruption of the Alpine skiing World Cup, where races are being canceled left and right due to lack of snow.
In World Cup news of a different sport, an airport being built in South Africa to accommodate the 2010 World Cup (that’s a big soccer tournament, you hopeless Yanks) could threaten Brit birds, according to the delightfully pretentious Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Swallows, lesser kestrels, corncrakes and crowned eagles — I love bird names! — fly south for the winter and roost in South Africa and Namibia. An airport in their nesting grounds could, as you might imagine, cramp their style.
But that’s not all. Eco-friendly motor racing — who woulda thunk?
And I leave you with this quote from the San Francisco Chronicle, regarding a proposal to restore a creek beneath a Presidio soccer field:
Some have portrayed this as a confrontation between sports fields and nature, where one side can only gain at the expense of the other. We disagree. There is room for both.
Hear, hear!
