By 
Dear GreenSportsBlog Readers and GreenSportsPod Listeners,
As some of you may have noticed, I took a hiatus — 14 weeks to be exact — from writing GreenSportsBlog and hosting GreenSportsPod. The main reason for this break was that I spent every weekend but one, from late August to the beginning of November, volunteering as a canvasser for Kamala Harris for President in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. We toggled between two swing counties, Monroe and Southampton, each only a 75 minute drive from my apartment on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge.
The experience was at once heartening, sad, hopeful, anger-provoking, energizing, exhausting and sometimes disbelief-inducing. While the vast majority of voters with whom we spoke were either strong Harris supporters or leaning that way, we did encounter our fair share of Trump voters (voter lists are not perfect). With very few exceptions, those conversations ranged from being very unpleasant (we were told to F-off, given the middle finger) to the downright scary (we were chased out of one development after a woman told us she was going to call security on us). Their venomous, sneering passion was unlike anything I’d seen in all of my prior canvassing efforts in Pennsylvania dating back to 2000 and the George W. Bush vs. Al Gore race.
Sadly but not surprisingly, climate change was barely on the minds of the Harris supporters and undecideds we met. Their top concerns were, #3: Abortion and women’s health more broadly; #2: The economy, and #1: Defeating Trump. One young undecided female voter said she was leaning towards Green Party candidate Jill Stein. I think — or at least hope — we convinced her that Joe Biden did the most on climate of any US President to date, that Kamala Harris would build on his record, that Donald Trump would reverse most of his climate accomplishments, and that a vote for Stein was really a vote for Trump. But she was only one of three climate voters we met at the 800 or so doors we knocked.
That said, the sense of the canvassers and staffers with whom I spoke was that, at the end of the day, Harris would pull through in a very tight race. There was no sign of a Trump ground game/canvassing effort and the Harris presence on the ground was incredible. One weekend, we collectively knocked on one million doors in Pennsylvania alone. The Harris-Walz campaign spent $1.5 billion on advertising, get out the vote, and more. She had crushed him in their one debate, or so it seemed.
But of course all of this turned out not be enough. I’m not a political pundit and so won’t get into Monday Morning Quarterbacking. I do recommend you read ‘A Kamala Harris Canvasser’s Education’ by Julia Preston in The New Yorker (it may be behind a paywall, in that case, you can get a free 30-day trial). She provides a thoughtful, in depth view of what canvassing was like, the headwinds the Harris campaign faced, and more.
The Climate Comeback Got Tougher…And More Important
Now we’re roughly six weeks out from Trump 2.0 and I’m not going to sugarcoat it:
The US is facing what will surely be a dramatic and massive rollback on climate programs, starting with the President Trump taking the US out of the landmark Paris Climate Accord as early as Day 1. His cabinet appointees with climate and climate-adjacent responsibilities are either 1) fossil fuel industry leaders, 2) supported by the industry, or 3) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And, for the most part, climate and the environment will likely be drowned out by flashy, headline-grabbing policies like mass deportations, attempts at prosecuting political opponents, and the daily Trump chaos machine.
As for the Green-Sports world, the #ClimateComeback got more difficult with Trump’s return to the White House for the five key stakeholder groups necessary to move climate action forward:
- Venues and teams
- Sponsors and leagues
- Sports media
- Fans
- Athletes
It seems to me that the biggest challenge will be fear of the President as well as his supporters in Congress and in the country.
The impacts may be subtle but meaningful, with the potential for self-censorship very real. It’s not difficult to imagine sports media dialing back on their references to climate, which are already at very low levels. It’s not hard to envision a corporation step back from a climate-themed sponsorship if they are going to be hammered for “woke capitalism”. And it’s not a stretch to think that climate-minded athletes — who, during the Biden administration, often expressed fears of being branded as hypocrites on social media for talking about climate while they have sizable professional carbon footprints — be even more reticent with Trump in office and his supporters even more emboldened?
This is of course understandable. Being pilloried, often nastily, for climate advocacy can certainly be unsettling.
But the thing is, stepping back simply lets the forces of climate denial and inaction step into the void and win without breaking a sweat.
So, as we head into this new administration it is crucial that Green-Sports stakeholders lean into climate advocacy more than ever. Let’s do so in ways that are based in fact and science. Let’s emphasize solutions that accelerate the #ClimateComeback. Let’s invite constructive criticism and discussion while not descending into trolling and shaming. And let’s not let bluster and bullying stop us from making sports a force for climate action.
GreenSportsBlog, GreenSportsPod, and EcoAthletes, the nonprofit I launched in April 2020 to ‘inspire and coach athletes to lead climate action’, will do our part. Will the #ClimateComeback succeed? Who knows? But one thing I do know is this: If we fold up our tents then we surely will not have success.
So let’s get this!
On Wednesday, we will post a podcast interview with the amazing Indian triathlete, eco-social venture CEO, and EcoAthletes Champion Pragnya Mohan. Then we will be up with blog posts including the Biggest Green-Sports story of the year. Thank you for reading, listening, and sharing!
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