To think these sporting events should be banned?

[idontfeelgoodaboutthis]

My niece was at the formula one in Italy this weekend.

404,000 people attended, most of whom didn’t seem to be Italian from her words. She told me she bought “at least” ten bottles of water this weekend. 11 teams flying in, flying their drivers in by private jet, and then out again. 404,000 people making extra journeys that they didn’t need to make.

The impact on the environment must be awful. AIBU to think these events should be banned for the sake of the environment?

How did your niece get there?

Exactly.
It is the only way.
My DGC are facing a very difficult world if we continue to indulge our wishes to the detriment of the planet.
We all want to continue as we are but we simply cannot do that any more.
Which political leader will grasp this nettle and take a lead?

I didn’t say that’s all they ate. They do eat fruit and veg and a lot of it will be out of season. It is so hypocritical. No way everything they eat is from this country. All my meat is.

Democracy is a wonderful thing until there is something unpopular that absolutely must be done as no politician standing on that ticket will be elected. That is the fatal flaw.

Doesn't matter if your meat is local, the impact of farming animals is far greater than the impact of transport which is minimal in the context of the full carbon footprint of a food.

And 50% of my fruit and veg are local and in season.

They don’t all arrive by private jet tho? A lot of them fly commercial airlines. Verstappen is the only driver on the current grid that has a private jet. And he has been known to fill it with other drivers to get them there. I saw it land once a few years ago and verstappen, Ricciardo, Albon, Norris and hulkenberg all got off it. So that’s 1 plane and 5 drivers. A quarter of the grid at the time

a lot of the equipment is also moved by road and on boats. They don’t just have one set of everything. They have a few. a full set up that covers Europe and at least one other full set up that covers races around Bahrain and the Middle East

when I’ve been to Silverstone there are also coaches that bring people from all over Britain. It’s not like 400 thousand people are all driving an individual car there. Double decker coaches (which there were many of) hold roughly 90 people

people also don’t arrive and leave again everyday. There are campsites all around the tracks where thousands upon thousands of people arrive on the Thursday and don’t leave again until the Monday. I’m sure I saw there were an estimated 60000 tents at Silverstone this year and more than 7000 camper vans. These people walk to the track from the campsites every day. There are exclusion zones all around the circuit with roads closed so driving there and parking isn’t actually possible

Let people enjoy their sport

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

No.

Zandvoort go even further and ban all motor vehicles in the entire town for the whole weekend.

They don’t all arrive by private jet tho? A lot of them fly commercial airlines.

Agree.

When I was working in the commercial flying world if it was an appropriate day of the week and you were heading in the direction of a major GP from the UK it was not unusual to have a team boss and maybe the drivers in First, then a big chunk of the rest of the team in business or further back.

It's changed a bit in recent years because some of the more exotic destinations aren't well served by major airlines and it's now easier to hire bizjets through companies like Netjets but I gather many still fly commercial, as you say not all drivers or senior team managers arrive in their own Gulfstreams.

Wasn't it Arvid and Liam who recently flew easyjet?!!!!

presumably we're also cancelling all forms of international football, tennis, cricket etc. let them run but hire a camera crew and we can all watch it at home.in fact, any sort of international travel. in this day and age what do you NEED to travel abroad for? medical care that categorically isn't available in your home country I guess? but that just requires some private jets. military stuff would be exempt obv. so absolutely total ban for the majority of the worlds population.

I agree with you about F1. It is staggeringly awful for the environment.

Compared to what?

This year’s football World Cup alone is estimated to have generated the carbon emissions of about eight years’ worth of formula one.

The carbon footprint of f1 is basically a rounding error compared to the carbon footprint of football.

I don't think you have to be ideologically pure yourself to question whether the excesses of a particular sport are necessary. The answer is there is too much money in it to be cancelled, like many other sports and activities.

It does make me wonder why as an individual though I should curtail anything I fancy doing when all this is going on all of the time. I've had people have a go at me online because I drive to the gym (in an EV) for some of my exercise.

TBH I don't think anyone form any political persuasion is being honest about what we really need to do to stop man made climate change or whether we actually can.

I'm sure she did laugh. I laugh at my deranged relatives too.

At the most basic level they are totally different though. Carbon use is built in to the very nature of driving a vehicle round a track. Football is basically 22 people wearing out a patch of grass.

Obviously when you add on all the accoutrements and the different scale of it, you may get some party, or bigger numbers for football.

But in climate crisis, would you really invent a sport that involves driving supercars and moving them and huge numbers of people around the world for most of the year?

When we had a pandemic we did stop many human activities and bloody miserable that was too.

But if the climate is in such a big crisis, should be not be stopping a lot of human activity and going back to basics? To what extent do we need to do that. I'd quite like to know. Not even environmental groups seem to open up that kind of public conversation let alone politicans.

People should be allowed to travel to Italy if they want to. I went twice this year actually and loved it. We flew. People should go where they want to. Travel is what makes life worth living!

I thought everyone on MN was pro EU and free movement and wanting to live in Europe..if your DC wanted the get to Milan. How do you expect they get there?

@DeftGoldHedgehog The emissions from cars driving around the track is less than 1% of the emissions of the sport. Football doesn’t have that, but involves far larger numbers of people travelling around with much greater frequency.

It’s not parity. Football’s global emissions eclipse those of formula one by orders of magnitude. One five week tournament produced eight times the carbon of a whole f1 season (using the highest estimates that account for things like fan travel etc).

The carbon footprint has very little to do with the 22 hybrid cars driving around the track.

And fuck the environment because we should all do whatever we want? Christ, that's so selfish.

Do you heat your home with a gas boiler? Do you drive a car?

No and occasionally, yes. Those things are necessities. Flying to a holiday as many times as you wish is not a necessity.

Yup. But I wanted to. I loved it. Italy was great fun. If you don't fly that's fine. More flights for me.