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Welcome back to the Sustaining Sport podcast.

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Today we are talking with Madeline Orr, assistant Professor of Sport Ecology at the University of Toronto.

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She is also a co-founder of the Sport Ecology Group and in early May she will be releasing a brand new book titled Warming Up how Climate Change is Changing Sport, which, as you may guess, focuses on how sport is adapting to and wrestling with climate change.

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Maddie and I actually have been talking about her making an appearance on this podcast for about two years now, but I think the timing in the end worked out really well given this tremendous book.

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I was able to read it pre-release, in preparation, and, even with my high expectations, I am impressed.

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It's clearly a labor of love, with near excessive details, and I really enjoyed hearing from Maddy about why she took certain stances on such dynamic topics and also how she navigates the double intersection of sport versus sustainability and academia versus industry.

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Important disclosure Maddy is at the time of recording one of my PhD supervisors.

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Thus is at the time of recording one of my PhD supervisors.

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Thus, you may ask, I surely wouldn't publish anything overly critical. On the contrary, the nature of an ideally authentic academic relationship is one of criticality, albeit civil, and to aid in the pursuit of knowledge.

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I know academia or the academy has its issues and we touch on many of them in this episode, but knowing this motivates the publishing of these kinds of conversations, free of charge and open access, and to keep all channels open, if you have any thoughts on mine or specifically Maddy's work, do reach out in good faith.

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Of course, I promise you we can take it and it may help inform a more accurate way forward.

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With that said, please enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at the world of sport ecology.

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Welcome, maddy, to the Sustaining Sport Podcast.

2:04

Thanks so much for having me.

2:06

So you have a book coming out which is essentially a summary of sustainability in sport, arguably over the last five years and also your career.

2:15

But we have to begin at the beginning. How did you get into sustainability in sport and to already get in the book?

2:22

There was a quote which I, like you, became interested in sport in the same way an atheist becomes interested in religion.

2:27

Say more.

2:29

Yeah, you know, I grew up in a house with a you know a dad who watches sport.

2:32

I played sport as a kid but it was more about.

2:35

It could have just as easily been dance or theater, like I just that's where my friends were.

2:39

I enjoyed it. I played all the way through university until an injury stopped me.

2:43

But again it was like I was there for my friends.

2:46

It wasn't like the competitive drive that kept me there and I never really watched sport Like it wasn't part of like my.

2:52

There would be hockey on in the house in the background. But growing up in Canada I think that's most kids experience and I got to working in sport kind of like through a back entrance years later from a friend whose sister owned a company called Spartan Race, the Canadian division, and they were doing obstacle course racing everywhere and she was like oh, you're really organized, you're into events, you want to help us out.

3:15

So I did and that was kind of my entry point into sport and I loved it and I thought, well, I think we can maybe accomplish something here in a way that's far more tangible than what I'd been studying at the time, which was international development, and that just felt so big and doom and gloom and all the problems, none of the solutions.

3:32

And so I thought, if I can use sport as an entry point to think about health and well-being, to think about gender equity at the time that's kind of where my head was that would be great.

3:43

And over time it just became abundantly clear that sport was going to be my entry point to talking about, you know, the big, bad, climate change, which had been on my mind for a really long time.

3:53

Um, but I hadn't really figured out how to, how to cope with that, how to deal with that.

3:57

Yes, which sports did you play when you were growing up?

3:59

Cause you were Canadian, so can I guess hockey.

4:03

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's, that would be a good guess. Um, no, I played all the ones you wouldn't expect.

4:07

So, as I played water polo and I played rugby and then I skied, you would have been fine.

4:13

Well, other than the skiing, you'd have been fine in South Africa because, uh yeah, water polo and rugby are the well.

4:18

Water polo is the summer training camp for the winter rugby season.

4:23

Um, and now in the book you have this quite nice personal, almost opening about how you were spending time in the Alps and you were observing changing conditions.

4:33

Tell us about how you kind of thought about that and how that maybe prompted you to get into things a bit more deeply.

4:39

Yeah. So I think one thing that sport does really nicely is it kind of crafts a calendar around the year for you.

4:44

And so if you play sport, follow sport.

4:46

You can kind of expect that certain things are going to happen at a certain time.

4:49

And as a water polo player we were indoors so it wasn't as meticulous around the calendar, but rugby for sure.

4:55

We would start our season in February.

4:58

We'd be shoveling snow off of the pitch through March and then the snow would melt and that would be exciting and then we'd get to play a little more hard outside because it would be icy.

5:08

And in skiing you expect that you would start skiing around the beginning of December and you kind of go through Easter.

5:15

And that's the kind of calendar that I grew up with.

5:18

So skiing bled into rugby season and then rugby season would end and it would be skiing season.

5:22

So it was kind of a beautiful. There was always something happening.

5:25

And when I took a gap year between my master's, my PhD, I went to the French Alps on a job actually with a British ski company and my job was to set up the transfers from the airport to the resort, the extras.

5:39

So all the lessons, all the you know activities and occasionally take people to the hospital when things went wrong, cause I had the whole client file, so I had their insurance and everything else, and I found myself the hospital quite a lot that year because we didn't have snow until January and you would think that, okay, well, if there's no snow, no one's getting injured.

5:57

That's not quite how it works. They're going to make snow artificially and they're not going to make it across the whole mountain mountain because that would cost too much money, so they're going to have only some runs open and then you've got more people in a kind of tightened space so the less experienced skiers are more likely to collide.

6:12

But you also have just the quality of the snow across the day.

6:15

If it's warm and it's fake snow, it's slush, so you just get bad conditions.

6:20

And so we saw that, uh, we saw it play out in injuries.

6:24

And then we saw very tragically and I think this is what really kind of woke me up was we saw quite a few avalanche deaths that year and it absolutely shook the town, uh, shook everyone's morale.

6:34

You don't expect that when it, you know it, it does happen, but when it happens multiple times in a season and kind of a few close mountains together.

6:42

It's a bit of a wake-up call. So that was the big one for me and I started looking around and thinking, well, this is really not good from a tourism perspective.

6:50

Obviously I had friends who you know their seasons were getting cut short, shifts getting cut at a restaurant, that kind of thing, but then from a health and safety standpoint it can be catastrophic.

6:59

So I started looking around and thinking, well, skiing is the obvious one, but it can't just be skiing Like.

7:06

I've watched it happening in other sports. I know friends back home playing rugby are playing on fields without snow in February, which is super weird, great for rugby, but not normal.

7:18

And so it was one of those like once you see it, you can't unsee it situations Like I just couldn't look away and I started seeing it everywhere.

7:25

I started like turning on the six o'clock news and there'd be a story about a storm in Asia that was shutting down this, that and the other.

7:32

You know you watch the Australian open and they're suffering with heat.

7:34

So it just kind of started appearing everywhere.

7:37

And so I thought, well, I have the background in international development to think through how this is going to hit people differently, and I think that was really the crux of it.

7:46

But I'm interested in using sport as a mechanism to get the message out, because if you are a person like me who grew up in a part of the world that we're far removed from the worst, worst impacts in Toronto, we're starting to get them now, but 10 years ago that wasn't the case and it was really easy for people to put it off and view climate change as someone else's problem or a future problem, and I was seeing it really show up in my own life in a big way, and so I thought well, if if someone's not going to have that conversation cause it's too sciencey or too complicated or just not their problem, maybe we can make them care because it's hurting sports.

8:23

Yes, and I do worry about skiing.

8:25

Sorry, I should say I feel guilty about with skiing, because I used to really love skiing.

8:30

I actually, many years ago, qualified as a ski instructor because I briefly thought that's what I wanted to do.

8:37

Kind of glad.

8:37

I didn't. It's still what I want to do.

8:39

Well, exactly, I mean the lifestyle but I'm like, oh, hang on, maybe opportunities are going down.

8:43

But yeah, like I, I went skiing recently for the first time in many, many years, got the train down to the Alps, you know, trying to do my best, one super expensive, so that we're talking structural issues there.

8:53

But then you get there and there's loads of snow at the top, but the bottom runs are completely empty.

8:58

So one, it's nice when we're trying to make this argument around climate change, there's, there's a real manifestation of it, but then the actual, as you say, the quality of the experience is way worse because everyone's crowded up at the top and more injuries.

9:09

And then the village, like the Apres experience is not the same, like the whole tourism event around it is not the same.

9:15

You know, I was, we were skiing, my husband and I with his parents last year in the Alps.

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Same thing like went over land and we're like this is great, at least it's an option.

9:23

But we got up there and the whole Valley is green and like just that, like emotionally, seeing a green Valley in the winter is not what you're expecting, and then and then you only really get the white when you get all the way up to the top.

9:34

So it was. Yeah, it's glaring to see it.

9:38

So now I mean this brings us to the, to the many, I'd say the probably first two thirds of the book.

9:43

Sport is our entry point into these issues and sport is being subjected to them, but the issues are much bigger than sport.

9:49

You know, I it's like it's weird, you can't.

9:51

You can't separate sport from the issues. But you can occasionally separate the issues from sport, but we don't want to do that.

9:57

We want to use sport as our point of entry.

9:59

So, uh and I again, similar same page as your, your other quote, you so, and again same page as your other quote.

10:03

You have a nice quote. Most of this book is grim.

10:06

So can you tell us a little bit about why?

10:08

What chapters two through to 10, are grim?

10:11

What's going on there?

10:13

Yeah. So most of my research, as you'll know that most of my research is actually an adaptation, and I approached climate change and sport originally in my work through adaptation because I thought it's a health issue, it's a social issue, it's a money issue.

10:27

There's an entry point for just about everybody in the sports world here if we frame it through adaptation.

10:32

So 10 years of my work has been in adaptation and that really looks like how hot is too hot to play.

10:37

So I, in writing this book, sat down with families who've lost their sons to heat-related illness and have been campaigning around how do we alleviate the heat-related stress of playing American football in particular?

10:52

Just because the kit is pretty problematic in terms of not letting you sweat and the season is really lined up with the worst of the summer heat.

11:00

But it's about heat, it's about air quality, it's about the quality of the pitch or the playing surface as well.

11:07

So in some cases we're talking about you know what does it look like when golf courses in Scotland start falling into the sea?

11:12

And I spent some time up there visiting courses, meeting with course managers, meeting with city officials as well and talking through the fact that, historically, a lot of golf courses in Scotland and Ireland would have been buffer sites to the village.

11:26

So it's on the coast because they know that a king tide can come in and absolutely cause a lot of damage to that site Occasionally a storm that happens every 50 years.

11:35

But if the village is on the inside of the course, then the village is protected and increasingly those courses have become the economic engine of those towns and tourism sites et cetera.

11:43

So places like St Andrews are right on the coast.

11:47

They buffer the sea from the town of St Andrews and if they're losing meters of land every year to the ocean, that's going to have a huge consequence on playing opportunities there, but also on just the safety features of the site.

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Is it safe to walk across it even, even, let alone play?

12:03

So we dig into that a little bit.

12:06

We get into the water as well. So I talked to surfers and sailors and folks who are in the water about what is it like to be an open water swimmer in the UK right now, where the water quality is just absolute crap, and so that's a challenge that I saw up close and personal in Rio and I talk about it at the beginning of the book a little bit.

12:23

But athletes getting out of the water feeling really awful because the bacteria content was so high.

12:29

And so what I try to do through the first 10 chapters of the book is just illustrate that just about anywhere you go with an outdoor sport there are climate hazards cropping up, that they are severe, but also that there are adaptation measures that can be taken.

12:43

That would avert the worst case scenarios if we have an honest conversation about it right now and if we get people on board and that's tricky, that's the hard part.

12:52

It's not often people are willing to admit that a really hot day is really hot because they're in it.

12:58

It's getting them to then make the jump and saying, well, this really hot day is not a one-off, it's part of a pattern, so we can expect more of them, which means we probably need policies in place, we probably need emergency protocols in place, and the worst case scenarios that I cover in the book and I say this kind of towards the end of that section is what they have in common is they thought they had more time and they didn't.

13:19

So I'm hoping that by that kind of two-thirds of the way through the book point, folks have a good idea of what they can expect in a variety of scenarios and environments, but also that they feel empowered that there's actually still quite a lot we can do.

13:32

We can avert the worst case scenarios, we can get people on board, we can tell a meaningful story about climate adaptation that might inspire other sectors and that how cool would that be.

13:41

So not all hope is lost, but we are in dire straits if we don't do anything.

13:45

Yes, and I do think the intro to the coastal erosion chapter is the best, when you talk about how Donald Trump was trying to build a wall, uh, against, divide Mexico and deny climate change, but then also was building a wall to protect his golf courses from climate change.

14:00

That's that's rich.

14:01

And actually it speaks to the bigger, the bigger value of this narrative that you are putting forward here, that we're talking about these issues, and sport is a great way to talk about the issues.

14:10

So, like, I think, maybe when we speak about people use the term the household or the individual and it sounds quite abstract, but it's like here is an actual person from an actual sports club that you know, maybe the reader has also played and their life is changing in this way.

14:24

But then I do think and you know I would have we and you have been talking about doing this interview for three years.

14:29

I was going to interview you anyway, but then I only read the book.

14:32

I finished it yesterday and I was surprised at the level of emotional depth.

14:36

I was maybe expecting an academic book. This is not an academic book.

14:39

This is a real, like a, just a real book.

14:41

This is a tangible book. This is, this is something for everyone to read.

14:50

What was it like unpacking that emotional stuff?

14:52

Cause I felt I don't know what the right phrase is, maybe a bit of secondhand trauma.

14:54

Yeah, it's funny. I think my, my husband will appreciate that. You just said that, um, cause he's watched me go through it.

14:58

I think I tried. I tried to say through the book like it's hard doing this work.

15:03

It's really hard being a person who goes into communities, sits with families who've had major losses or traumas, hears, you know, the secondhand and sees it Like I've walked through.

15:13

I've walked through forests and BMX facilities that have been torn down by fire.

15:19

I've walked along, you know, through entire communities in Puerto Rico that were obliterated by the storms and then seen how they've tried to rebuild that and what that looked like.

15:29

Through parts of Louisiana that were impacted by Hurricane Katrina first, and then Ida 10 years later, 15 years later.

15:36

And dealing in climate trauma is hard and I don't want to shy away from that and I try really hard to just be really honest about it.

15:43

That it sucks and it's grim and there's a lot of bad news here, but that just about everywhere you look where there's bad news, there's people doing good stuff too, and so that the folks who are in it haven't given up hope, we can't give up hope on them.

15:57

There's a responsibility kind of among those of us who have some power in the sports space and I would say, like I include academics in that we know better, so we have to do better but to share what we know, to have conversations about it at the highest levels, to make sure it's visible in places like the premier league and formula one and all these places that folks are going to watch on TV and go for their escape.

16:16

We have to have these conversations there because that's where we can really drive kind of mass change and set a new tone for what climate change means in sport.

16:24

But on the secondhand drama piece, it was really hard doing the research on this.

16:33

It's 10 years of research. That was hard phone calls, hard visits, a lot of unpacking people's trauma.

16:36

At one point I talk about the Tsunaha people in British Columbia and how they had to fight back against a Japanese developer who was trying to build this like massive ski resort and and just like the amount of trauma that brought to that community over 20 years of fighting that.

16:52

You know it's really hard but I think it's worthwhile to do it and I kind of walk away and keep in my head like this is worthwhile work and I think sometimes, like sport, can feel kind of frivolous, but every person who plays sport goes home at the end of the day and lives a life and you know, all the people who work in sport also have lives.

17:13

They've got kids and families and concerns and worries, and they're being hit by this too.

17:17

So I think what kept me sober through the whole thing was just this idea that it's worthwhile.

17:25

It's worth doing. These are stories that are hard to get, hard to find.

17:28

It was an expensive project as well. Like there were a lot of grants that had to be sought and got to to go to these places, to be present, to show up in places like Kenya and Australia.

17:38

Like I did a lot of travel for this and I talk about being part of the problem too, but it was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and that's just what it was and I think I would do it again, but I definitely got to the end of it and needed a bit of a break from it.

17:51

Yes, and I just think the level of detail is probably what I was not expecting.

17:55

I mean, particularly like the chapter on drought.

17:57

You talk about very tangible cases in Cape town during the drought of rugby clubs struggling and this kind of stuff.

18:03

I mean I was on the other side of South Africa at the time so we weren't experiencing the drought and I was speaking to a lot of friends about using gray water in their toilets, all this kind of survival instinct stuff, but I wasn't thinking about the sports clubs at the time.

18:15

So I mean, how did you go about gathering this level of detail across this many disasters, across this many sports?

18:22

What does your Excel spreadsheet look like?

18:25

So I'll be honest, a lot of this work wasn't Excel spreadsheet, it was years and years and years of building networks and relationships, and then those networks and relationships build networks and relationships, like it kind of is a snowball effect.

18:35

I was really fortunate in my PhD to have people around me Ingrid Schneider, tiffany Richardson, like people who come from sports, and people who come from like forest service and like just kind of all over the place.

18:46

Um, steve Kelly is the commissioner of commerce in Minnesota now who really kind of focused my attention on the fact that you're not going to get this done unless you've got good networks and unless you make yourself someone people can trust to talk to.

18:59

And I spent a lot of time building networks, a lot of time building networks, and there's like more than a hundred interviews in the book that you actually get to see in terms of, like I named their names and I talk about them, but there's hundreds more that are not shared because they were part of research projects that were protected by ethics board and so I can't tell you who said that and how I got that information specifically.

19:20

But you, you build it over time. I think when you become, you know one of the people who does the thing like I've kind of become the person who does adaptation work in in sport it opens a lot of doors.

19:33

Um, and I think the other part of that is when you like, it took me a really long time to learn how to tell these stories in a sensitive way, in an inclusive way, with language that the folks that I'm talking about would appreciate and recognize.

19:44

So I spend a lot of time checking my language as well, sending you know bits and scraps to different people and saying, hey, did I represent you?

19:51

Well, is that how you want that to be shared?

19:54

And the more you build that practice of like not just the ethics around research but the relationships of research, the more doors open and people will pass you to their friend or their buddy because they know that you'll treat that respectfully.

20:07

So, basically, everywhere I went, I was on book research trips for the better part of two years and everywhere I went, extra doors were open just because I just tried to be friendly and like I'm here to help.

20:18

I want to tell your story as honestly as I can, as generously as I can.

20:23

I want people to know what happened here so that we can avert disaster elsewhere, and when you frame it like that, people are usually in good faith, willing to help.

20:32

I think that network point is so important. It's a little bit why I started this podcast.

20:35

And it's funny where, like, I don't know if I can keep doing this podcast forever and probably not, and I know you've dabbled in podcasting and it's very hard, especially when you have other focuses in the primary workload.

20:46

But it is this weird serendipitous type of thing where people have messaged me because they've heard an episode that I would never have known that they existed.

20:53

So like if someone says what's the goal for the podcast?

20:56

If it ended today, it's achieved a lot.

20:58

I mean probably even me and you. Having this conversation was facilitated by it in some way.

21:02

So that's that's cool. But then I agree, especially that kind of secondhand thing.

21:05

I have a great deal of respect to a people who are willing to say oh, thank you for asking me this, it's not about me, but I know someone else, and that's that's that's powerful, because often we want to kind of grab hold of it, take ownership of everything that we can.

21:19

Yeah, and it's one of those things too where, like often, the person who is most impacted by something is the most vulnerable.

21:23

So there's a vulnerability piece here as well where I'm aware of like I'm a white cishet woman from a privileged background.

21:31

I have a lot of knowledge and training which puts a lot of power in my hands and I'm an outsider in a lot of places.

21:38

So me going into like a ski community pretty easy people will talk to me.

21:42

Me going into a place like rural Puerto Rico different story, right.

21:46

So like there's a whole level of trust building and relationship building that has to happen in order to get anything worthwhile.

21:52

But it's worth it. It's worth building those relationships and having those conversations and figuring out how to build community in places and be in community with people.

22:02

Like it's all about reciprocity. And that's something actually I learned from Indigenous scholars here in Canada who early in my career were like look, if you're going to go into community and it's vulnerable communities or recently traumatized communities, it's got to be about reciprocity.

22:15

Lead with reciprocity. How can you help them?

22:17

Bring that first, and if you can bring something useful to them knowledge, information, connections, resources then ask a favor after, and that goes a long way and that's a practice that goes back eons in indigenous practice, but it like and it's so obvious to like, do them a favor before you ask for a favor, but it goes a long way.

22:36

So if any researchers are listening, I would say always bring.

22:43

Here's how I want to help before you start asking for personal information and favors, yes, the old um the co-production of knowledge, but also in like an authentic sense, not just saying, oh, we co-produced this knowledge and then don't give us any evidence of how or why, or who was benefiting.

22:55

And there's some stories that you can't tell, like there's some stories they're going to tell you and you can't, that's not yours to share.

23:07

Yes, exactly. Or knowing when to realize that someone else is doing a better job of telling that story and put your weight behind them rather than trying to set the stage.

23:11

So now, talking of, like, the disadvantaged communities, often particularly, I think, from a personal perspective in Southern Africa, we see the effects of climate change are very present and you talk about quite a few examples in the book, and the causes are largely around the global North, which is, I know, a term we don't like, but we have no other term.

23:29

Really, what do you think sports role is in there? Because I always worry that and you know that we see some evidence of this, but then evidence the other way that when you have a community that is, you know, wiped out by a flood or something, sport goes to the back of the mind, like when I'm worried about sport, worried about a house, worried about food.

23:41

Is that a case where we just say, right, sports is going to take a backseat until this community is back on its feet?

23:46

Or is there a role for sport there in the adaption sense?

23:49

Yeah, there's always a role. There's always a role, right.

23:52

And I think the piece that sport needs to rediscover, because it used to do this really, really, really well, is to go where you're needed.

24:00

So not necessarily where you want to go as a commercial property, as whatever, but go where you're needed.

24:06

And for generations, sport facilities, sport structures, have been used as places where emergency resources can be distributed, where people can gather.

24:16

In the case of an emergency in Puerto Rico I keep going back to Puerto Rico, but I spent some time there they use their basketball courts and their baseball diamonds as the sites where helicopters can land, so on a baseball diamond to distribute food, and then they get trucked off to to the basketball courts, because the basketball courts are clear and hard surface and weren't super damaged by the storm, and so you can drive a truck right onto it and serve food to people and distribute medical supplies, and people know where that is right.

24:48

Like if you told me, oh, go to this address in your community. I've lived in Toronto most of my life. I was gone for 15 years now and back.

24:50

But if you told me, go to so-and-so address, like I don't know that I necessarily would know where that is.

24:53

But I know where the baseball diamond is and when there's no electricity and there's no comms, that's easy, like I know.

25:00

I know where the park is, that's easy, I can get there, and that's an easy thing to spread by word of mouth.

25:05

And there's many, many countries who operate that way.

25:07

I was just on the phone, actually last night, with folks in Oceania, the Solomon Islands, where they've just been hit by storm after storm and it's it's pretty dire, and they, they too, are using some of their sport facilities to be at the center of the response plan, because people know where it is right.

25:22

It's the center of the community in more ways than one, and it can't just be the center of the community when in good times it's gotta be the center in bad times.

25:28

We saw that with COVID.

25:31

We saw that across the world, emergency hospitals are being erected in sports stadiums because they had the space.

25:37

That's great. How do we do more of that? And so I would say that, especially in places where resources are scarce, your sport facilities can be places of healing, they can be places of bringing people together, they can be places of resource distribution and the rest of the world who plays that sport, who knows that sport should be showing up in those places too and saying, hey, we're here to help.

25:56

So, if it's I talked about, like Pakistan and the floods, there was a soccer team in one of the heavily impacted areas where everybody was basically out of their homes.

26:06

The soccer pitch was slightly raised and so it was dry, and that's where everyone came to throw their tents.

26:13

But the rest of the soccer playing or football playing world like that's where we all need to show up, like where are they, how can we help?

26:20

And they're using the pitches because they know where it is and how to get there and that it's going to be safe.

26:25

Um, and that their strength in numbers by being together in that moment.

26:28

How can the rest of the football world show up and actually be there, too, with them?

26:32

And not necessarily like let's have a bunch of rich white people show up, but like send your funds, send your support, get your football team to send it there.

26:42

And that's an aligned message that works.

26:44

People get it Like if you, if I, show up to a football game and they're saying hey, there's people who really need our help in the football community, in this place, and they're using football stadiums and here's how football is helping them.

26:53

Let's help too. That's a message that works every time.

26:57

Yes, and I think that's particularly pointed at, like the more community, community level scales.

27:02

What I mean by that is particularly the ownership of the facilities.

27:04

If the facilities are owned by some private equity, overseas whatever, then maybe that doesn't seem like an option because it the even though the stadium is in front of you.

27:12

It seems quite alien, whereas so many sporting communities, like everyone knows the owner or everyone knows the coach or this kind of stuff.

27:19

So it's quite symbiotic, it's quite instantaneous, it's like, coach, we need the team to chip in on this and it's like instantaneous, and I think it's important we don't move too far away from that kind of stuff.

27:29

So let's talk about some bureaucracy, because we have to.

27:33

You have been kind of bridging the gap, as I'm trying to do it, I guess, between industry and academia, and both the sports industry and the sort of broader industry.

27:43

What are the big challenges? What are the big tips?

27:45

What comes across in the book that's important for us to improve on?

27:48

Yeah, that's a really good question. So as I was writing the book, I was also writing the Sports for Nature report for UNEP and as we got towards the end of that, you know, politics always creep in different perspectives, different outcomes that they're looking for in that, and I kind of tease that at the end of the book a little bit.

28:04

But there's there's always a struggle between making an ask of sport and and asking too much to the point where people are going to run away.

28:13

So what I was trying to do with this book and as I was going through it, I was learning a lot as well about, you know, my friend.

28:20

I have quite a few friends and I'm grateful to them, who I, you know, bounced ideas off of throughout the book.

28:26

They work in various pro and elite sport organizations around the world and my big question was like how hard can I push sport right now?

28:33

Is this the time that I can push really hard?

28:35

And and the other, like there's there's dynamics to that, because I would love to say sport, do more right now.

28:41

Like you've got a lot of money, I know you do, don't lie, um.

28:43

And the other part of me knows that it just in the last few years we've seen way more sport organizations pick up sustainability.

28:50

In-house teams commit money to it, run campaigns meaningful campaigns they're trying and and those folks can sometimes be in the caught in the line of fire when people like me go on BBC or go on ESPN and start attacking and saying sport's not doing enough, and then my WhatsApp group blows up saying Maddie, back off.

29:12

And so I'm in that weird kind of liminal space between I'm an academic, my paycheck comes from outside sport, I'm secure and my role is to be honest about what I see, to report on findings as I know them and I know that and that's sometimes a hard job and also to drive change.

29:32

I run the sport ecology group. Part of our mission is, like our mission statement literally has to drive change in the sport sector through education, events and resources.

29:41

And is that not what we're all meant to do as educators is to drive change right.

29:46

So sometimes that means it's uncomfortable.

29:48

Sometimes that means saying this isn't good enough and, as the person who has flown into places that are on the front lines and as the person who is not just yelling at the sport machine, saying reduce your transport because of climate change, and generally like I can actually tell you.

30:06

This is what happens to people when we don't take care of this properly.

30:08

These are the outcomes and I'll I'll spell them out.

30:11

They're grim. I come at it from a place of like.

30:14

It's deeply personal. It's people in communities that I know and care about that are on the front lines, and so I expect and I want more from sport, especially elite pro sport.

30:27

I don't see it right now and I know you agree, we've had those conversations a lot.

30:30

It's not where it needs to be on the sustainability front.

30:33

That said, I worked really hard in this book, in this, in the kind of that last third where I go through.

30:39

Here's what's been happening in green sports. Here's where it needs to go.

30:42

I tried really hard to frame it in a way that there is good stuff happening and there's good people on it and they're trying.

30:50

We need way more. My attacks and critiques are not necessarily on the sustainability manager at so-and-so organization.

30:57

That's never the case. It's never about the individuals. It's about the highest levels of ownership and management who are allocating dollars to projects and making big decisions about, systematically, how we're going to function into the future.

31:07

That's who I'm targeting when I critique sport and, as a result, I was very careful to celebrate the stuff that's worth celebrating and there's lots of it and to try to not be too too critical of sport yet, because I also recognize that for many organizations this is a new conversation, so some have been at it for a long time and I try to highlight that, but for the majority, this is a conversation that started in like 2018, right, so like.

31:33

Just because I've been at it for 10 years and others have been working longer, like doesn't mean that every organization knows, and so hopefully this book also will generate conversation and raise awareness.

31:45

I wrote it in a way, hopefully, that's accessible and not academic really at all.

31:48

I tried to go more for like a journalistic voice and that was really intentional to invite more people into the conversation as opposed to pushing them away.

31:59

Yes, and I think that point about the sustainability manager is good, where I'm almost not interested in hearing what a sustainability manager has to say on some kind of panel, because I know that they've been given talking points they might not even agree with and they've probably tried to push things internally that were, yeah, what's the right phrase?

32:15

Kiboshed, and actually if you speak to them over a beer later in the day they might give you a little bit more insights, obviously off the but then we can see that those conversations are happening at least, and eventually, well, they either have to tip over into something more meaningful or, yeah, these organizations will be left behind, I guess.

32:32

Yeah, but it's a fine line, right, like I'm cheering on the sustainability managers because I know they're having a tough conversation with their boss every day when they go to work and I know they're fighting an uphill battle internally.

32:41

So I'm cheering them on and, at the same time, not hating on but like sending all of the shade at their bosses, who aren't supporting them enough.

32:49

Like why isn't that person getting more help?

32:51

Why is it not getting more budget? I know that most of these organizations and I know you've had folks like Chen on the show who will have talked about things like capitalism and the fact that we have to make money that's the stakeholder privacy principle is still alive and well, and so I know that functionally, that's how people are evaluated in their jobs.

33:11

I get it, but at the same time, do better and like I mean that at like an organizational level, not as a critique of the individual sustainability managers I know they're doing their best.

33:21

Yes, and it's funny you reflected on, like the security of your paycheck Cause I think I'm now obviously at Loughborough, london, which is your former place of work, but Loughborough has a huge degree of funding that comes from their not production, that's the wrong word but their throughput of elite athletes.

33:35

So many great players come out of Loughborough so they get funding from elite sports.

33:38

So if elite sport were to shrink revenues, for example, loughborough would be affected in some way and maybe I wouldn't have got the position I'm in now.

33:45

And then even at a bigger level, I currently live in the UK, a country that is wealthy in part for some very dubious actions over the last 500 years, and then I'm a white South African guy.

33:55

Come on, who am I actually going to be accusing of wrongdoing at this point?

34:01

As I said, at the individual level, at the organizational level, I think it is easier to, oh it's more important to make these arguments, because we're talking about systemic shifts and I guess it's difficult because it does sometimes start.

34:12

I always want to encourage the sustainability manager at whatever organization to have a hard conversation with their boss, even if it doesn't work the first 15 times.

34:19

But, it's better than nothing.

34:21

I also would just add to that, if you're a sustainability manager and you're listening to this and you're like I am fighting that uphill battle ever, like tell us, join us.

34:29

Like have a conversation with Ben. Have a conversation Like we are happy to hash it out, strategize with you.

34:34

Like there are people who want to help you make this work.

34:37

And yeah, your boss is going to say no the first 15 times, but guess what, on the 16th, maybe your argument is refined enough.

34:42

So, like, lean on the rest of us and I know there's group chats and there's conversations and there's side things going on.

34:48

My WhatsApp is blowing up every day with sustainability group chats.

34:51

I'm in like lean on the community because the rest of us are here cheering you on, wanting you to succeed.

34:57

But now let's talk about more bureaucracy, but now this time on the side of the academy, as they call it, which I despise.

35:03

What a mess.

35:04

Exactly Academics, because I must say I was a bit naive for many years where I worked in renewables, so it's private sector.

35:13

I've worked in the nonprofit sector and sometimes do, and I always kind of put academia on the top.

35:18

I was like right, but academia is where the buck stops, this is where objective truth is found and not always Quite a few interesting folks in academia.

35:27

Tell us a little bit about some of your experiences, some of the pushback, I guess, some of the appropriate critiques, inappropriate critiques.

35:35

You know, to be in academia is to develop a thick skin and to do it fast.

35:39

You know you get more no's than yeses in academia and I think a lot of that gets hidden because no one's posting on Twitter about their fourth rejection for that article that they wrote.

35:47

That no one seems to like. I think it's, in a way, easier to be in academia than being on the front lines of, like, actually working in sport and doing the thing, because we get to sit back and just talk about the thing.

35:58

But in other ways I think a lot of people look at the academy and they're like oh okay, like Maddie, your job is to teach and to do research, and that's true.

36:07

But you can't teach unless you're actually in touch with folks who are doing it, because you're going to be 10 years out of date pretty fast.

36:13

You can't do research in my world as a social scientist and like my training is kind of in social science and climate, like natural resources.

36:22

So I kind of I'm dually trained, but most of my work is social science and like the human impacts of climate change, and you can't do it without having relationships.

36:31

So I have to keep those doors open.

36:33

It's not an option. It's mandatory for my job and at the same time, it's not valued necessarily in the academy to do that.

36:40

So the academy wants you to do research that is publishable.

36:45

The model that is like dominant around that the way grant funding works, the way you advance in your career, is to publish a lot, to get a lot of grant money.

36:53

Like there's no grant money in sport. No one really gets grant money.

36:55

Like there's some, it trickles occasionally.

36:58

It's rare because there's this expectation that if you're working in sport, the professional leagues and the money that's in sport is going to fund your work.

37:06

And again, that's not how it works. So there's a lot of politics involved.

37:10

There's also always challenges around justifying.

37:14

You have to justify what you're doing as an academic.

37:17

Every time you do a study it's going to be in the intro Like this is why we have to do this.

37:21

This is why this is important. I deal in research that is not necessarily life and death stakes, although sometimes it is but it's not like I'm curing cancer, like that's not what I'm doing.

37:32

Most of the time I'm kind of getting into the nitty gritty of like how this impacted a community's mental health or what it did to their sports facilities which, like, some people just view as like, not that important.

37:43

And I get a lot of shade on Twitter, for example, a lot of trolls who will be like sports don't matter in the context of climate change, why focus on that?

37:51

And then, behind closed doors, I'm getting it in the academy too.

37:54

The peer scientists will be like we don't need this.

37:57

You know social science approach to climate change.

37:59

I would argue we absolutely do. But you'll get it from that angle.

38:03

You'll get it from other colleagues who are like, well, why, why do this in sport?

38:07

Like they're in sport and they don't see it. So again, like there's always folks who are not going to get it, but there's a lot of people who do, and those are the ones I'm interested in talking to and I just kind of blur out the noise and try not to pay too much attention.

38:22

But the being at Loughborough was a bit of a weird one for me because you know at the time I think he still is, but he's on his way out Seb Coe was the chancellor, which he's also the president of, world Athletics.

38:35

I have contracts with World Athletics.

38:38

World Athletics, I like, was contracted with them to deliver training to their athletes, based on some of my athlete activism research to talk about climate change and to train them up on that.

38:47

While we were like in the middle of that contract, world athletics develop or put out new rules around trans inclusion and part of the training was LGBTQ plus inclusion and how to talk about it as an athlete, and then they came out with that.

39:03

So it's this weird like there's always a power dynamic to navigate.

39:07

I try to think about it in the sense of like. Is my work grounded in research?

39:11

If it is, I'm usually okay. Is it the right thing to do Like?

39:15

Is it the right thing to do because it's good for someone's paycheck?

39:18

Or is it just like I'm on the right side of history on this and I'm protecting those closest to pain?

39:22

If that's the answer, I'm usually okay and I'll take the hit on the backend for whatever politics come up.

39:29

Yes, I think that's a good lesson as well, and I think, particularly with something like climate change, we're not going to solve it, probably even my lifetime, my kid's lifetime, but like-.

39:38

Oh God, I hope we solve it in your lifetime, ben, come on.

39:40

Well, you say that I mean you know, we, we can probably get some big wins, but complete fixing it I don't know.

39:46

But the point is, I think there's still something important to be able to sit down with your kids one day, your grandkids, and say, listen, I tried in good faith for what I thought was the best way to do it at the time.

39:56

And I know that sounds a little bit like what's the phrase navel gazing, you know, like sort of self-involved, like self-righteous, but it's, you know, we all, we all.

40:09

There's that that psychological trope. We all overvalue ourselves or like we over emphasize how important we are in any situation.

40:12

But to some degree, if we all act in good faith, then that creates the kind of movement or the change that, yeah, we want.

40:18

And obviously you've had a few setbacks but you've had plenty of wins along the way.

40:22

So that kind of is testament to the process.

40:26

Yeah, yeah, and that's just how it's going to be always right.

40:28

Like you're going to apply to grants I've applied to more grants that I haven't gotten than that I have and I think that's normal.

40:33

I've submitted more journal articles that have been rejected than that have been accepted, and that's normal.

40:39

Like it's all normal, it's all part of it.

40:41

You just keep going, like it's worth it to keep going, and I think that's the.

40:45

That's the toughness I was talking about at the beginning, where, like, you're going to get a lot of no's and you've got to be ready to say yes for yourself, but yes, it's still worth it and yes, I'm still going to do it and it's, in the long haul, going to add up, it'll be worth something at the end of this.

41:02

Yes, but it's interesting when it gets a bit personal, and you picked up a few of your personal stories there.

41:06

But there was one you referenced in the book about a colleague I can't remember her name, but was it someone Professor de Jong, at the University of Strasbourg, where, yeah, could you tell us about that tale, because I think it was in a footnote and my mind was just blown?

41:19

Yeah, so Carmen Dijon, hydrologist based in France, wonderful person genuinely, and we only met like a couple of years ago.

41:27

We were on, we were getting on the same media calls, actually around around the time of the Beijing Olympics and there was a hundred percent artificial snow and we were putting out a report on it and she'd just put out research on it, and so she and I started running in the same circles, kind of quite a lot.

41:41

We knew of each other but hadn't connected until then, and so we chatted then and we chatted again last year, right as I was finishing up the book, and on one of the calls she shared and like I had to double and triple and quadruple check that, she was cool with me sharing this because it's tricky, right, there are folks who don't want us to do what we do.

41:57

There's a lot of people actually who don't want us to do what we do.

42:05

Everyone who makes money on sport and would rather just keep making money on sport and not caring.

42:07

Those people find me and Carmen very annoying. So Carmen's work as a hydrologist is to look at the availability of fresh water in mountainous regions and how that water is being used and where it's being allocated and what the water rights are, et cetera, et cetera.

42:18

She started discovering about 10 years ago that there is over pulling of water happening by ski resorts because they're not getting enough snow.

42:28

So if you don't get enough snow, you have to pull water in order to make snow.

42:32

And if you've got a reservoir that is emptied after a few runs, you said like suddenly, where are you going to get the water?

42:38

And she started finding that they're pulling it out of like boreholes and pulling it out of municipal systems and there's just places that it shouldn't come from.

42:46

She started publishing that work and the ski industry was not pleased about it and started putting quite a lot of pressure on her university to fire her and shut down her lab.

42:55

And they managed to succeed.

42:57

So they actually got quote unquote rid of her, except that she basically was like I'm not going to stop because I have academic freedom.

43:05

So she challenged it. She was able to stay in her role, but without pay, as they were in.

43:11

This legal challenge went on for years three years to just about every court in France.

43:16

Ultimately she was allowed to keep her job because she didn't break any academic rules, she didn't have any gross misconduct and ultimately, the reason that she was being they were trying to put her out to pasture was because of politics and the fact that skiing really dominates the industry in that area and they didn't want to be critiqued out loud by someone credible.

43:32

So she went through years of legal battles and she didn't get paid during that time.

43:38

So she was working without pay for years.

43:41

You know, a bunch of her grad students couldn't continue, et cetera, and eventually she won the case.

43:49

They had to back pay her for it because she'd done nothing wrong except do her job.

43:51

That unfortunately had bad news for the ski industry.

43:53

But she was saying like it ruined it for her, like she doesn't ski anymore.

43:57

She like her mental health took a hit for years, thank goodness, like she's partnered and her partner has a good job and they were able to kind of maintain the home for their kids and so there weren't kind of devastating impacts to lifestyle, but there were devastating impacts to everything else.

44:13

Absolutely terrifying when it gets that personal and particularly.

44:16

You know, some people still say sports, not political.

44:18

I mean my God like, if you ever need an example.

44:21

What's particularly terrifying about that as well is that the outcome was they were still going to run out of water.

44:26

You know what I mean. It's not like she was advocating for I should be paid more or something beneficial to her.

44:31

Like her research is a warning flag of something bad happening in the future and it could be prevented, and that's that's the reaction.

44:42

But that's you know. It echoes what happened in the 70s with the researchers who were at places like Exxon that had in-house researchers looking at climate change, and in the 70s they discovered that their operations were going to have devastating impacts on the planet and the reaction within the company, within the oil companies, was to close the science office, fire all the scientists and shut down all the research and like, had a bunch of folks sign NDAs.

45:05

They couldn't actually talk about the research that they'd done, that had found these devastating impacts.

45:08

So it harkens back to the same thing.

45:10

The people who benefit off destroying the planet are going to continue to shut down the people who throw a flag on the play and say stop like, stop hurting the planet, planet.

45:19

We are going to be unpopular amongst those people.

45:23

Yes, exactly, okay. So final note and I think this is quite an important one and I guess it could be two topics there's always the accusation of hypocrisy around both athletes, who try and engage in this kind of conversation, but also academics, and I actually think there's been too much heat on athletes and not enough heat on academics around our own lifestyles.

45:42

And, yeah, I was trying to advocate for more sustainable.

45:44

There's more sustainable that, and actually after this, we should talk about the word sustainable.

45:47

That's the proper end. But, yeah, how do we, how do you at least balance this argument of having a high carbon lifestyle to do the work that you do, but then advocating for a low carbon society?

46:01

Yeah, okay, so like.

46:04

But then advocating for, yeah, a low-carbon society, yeah, uh, okay, so like. I'm the first to say I am a hypocrite and I think I literally like, I quote Taylor Swift like it's me, hi, I'm the problem.

46:09

It's me in the book, because it is like I know that I fly to do my research, I fly to conferences, I am on a plane a lot like a lot, a lot like an embarrassing amount and I, my husband and I, have had many, many heart to hearts about this.

46:27

My husband, for those who don't know, um is also an academic sports sociologist and we have quite a few conversations about the ethics of that.

46:34

I'm at the point right now where there's gotta be two reasons for me to be going somewhere.

46:39

So that's one of the ways I balance it, for myself is like it can't just be that there's a conference.

46:44

If I'm going to a place for a conference, I'm also touching base with folks in the community that I might know or people that I don't know, that I should be aware of.

46:51

I'm visiting local nonprofits and making connections.

46:53

I'm trying to find ways to build community.

46:56

Wherever I go, we offset everything we do.

46:59

We're partnered with an organization here in Canada, an indigenous led woman led project out on the West coast, and that's in the book too.

47:04

So I share, I share that.

47:10

I try to be transparent about it. It's not perfect. Offsets are like very solidly medium, at best and only if they're good offset projects like still only medium.

47:15

And I, it's hard, I like.

47:17

I know that in the next few years my life is there's going to have to be some major changes and I am thinking through what are the places that I'm going to focus on so that I'm flying only to a couple of places and for prolonged visits as opposed to like just three weeks.

47:33

Like how do I build that in?

47:35

Here's the thing.

47:37

I think structurally there is no perfect answer and I don't think there's individual solutions to common problems either.

47:42

So I think putting the emphasis on any individual is not really a fair thing.

47:48

I know that and that's fine.

48:04

I'd rather hold high, like hold high standards for myself and everyone in my community and and find ways within a broken system to still do good work.

48:10

And for me right now that means I still fly, but I don't eat meat.

48:13

I don't drive a car. We walk and take transit everywhere.

48:16

Like when I'm in a place, I'm very low carbon, flying is my one thing and because I do research internationally, like I'm in a place.

48:22

I'm very low carbon, flying is my one thing and because I do research internationally, like I'm a field worker.

48:24

But that also means that, like, my office at the university is like the size of a closet.

48:29

I don't have a whole lab. I don't like everything gets unplugged when I leave the room, like I am very, very good about it within the places I operate and I think you make the changes you can make right.

48:40

Like no one's mad at a single mom for driving a van because she's got three kids that have to get to school and then she's got to get to work and there's no public transit or option to walk.

48:49

Like we can't be mad at that person because they're making the choices they have.

48:52

I've made certain choices for my career and for what I hope is bringing benefit everywhere I go.

48:58

Again, it's about that reciprocity. So I'm not going to a place unless I can offer something to them as well.

49:04

And it's not perfect and that's just what it is.

49:07

I'm looking forward to things like electric flights.

49:10

There's an eco-athlete based in the US right now who's working on electric planes that can.

49:16

I think it's up to 40 passengers and they're going live in about a year.

49:20

So, like that's, like there is stuff happening and I try to keep on top of that and promote that.

49:23

It's not perfect.

49:29

I also think, though, that, like we're not going to individual solution, our way out of a big systemic problem Like this is going to have to be coming from the top.

49:34

So it's tricky.

49:36

There's no perfect answer to this one. I'm happy to say I'm part of the problem.

49:39

I am, and that's okay.

49:42

I mean, I always. I always try and put it in the context of like my own historical record versus like my current actions, cause I really have not zeroed but minimize my flying in recent years, but up until about 2018, I flew a lot and I've traveled the world to some to a greater degree than any person in history probably thought they could prior to at least the industrial revolution.

50:03

So then it's weird for me now to tell people not to fly because I've seen so much stuff and maybe they haven't.

50:09

And I mean bringing the conversation back to sport, there's a lot of talk about the German Euros that's coming up, the men's football tournament, where a lot of that stuff can now be done by train because they have the infrastructure.

50:18

But then I was in a conversation the other day about saying, well, why can't the Africa Cup of Nations do that?

50:22

And I'm like, well, that's a bit chicken in the egg, right?

50:25

Because they don't have the infrastructure. Maybe and this is where sport could come in sport can encourage them to build the infrastructure.

50:30

And obviously there's a lot of conversations about Africa trying to leapfrog, but trying to leapf in the same way because there's so much harm of the industrialization process that happened.

50:42

What I do struggle with, I think, is particularly and I like that you gave like two principles around when you make a decision to take the action, particularly with academics.

50:49

I don't know why we're shouting at sports stars so much. When a sports star flies, they have to.

50:53

The game that they are being paid to play in is there.

50:56

With academics, oh, I'm getting some weird ones where you know, I spoke to a colleague the other day where her and a colleague would go to a conference in one of the Spanish islands, so they had to fly specifically because they wanted to go to one of the Spanish islands, and so they'd found the conference and I'm like, okay, you're already the wrong way around there, like that's a red flag.

51:15

But then there are two subject matters One was sustainability and the other one was business authenticity, and I'm like, but that is the least authentic thing I've ever heard.

51:22

So you know what I mean. That's where I get a little bit frustrated about it, cause I agree with you and your book is to some degree a testament to your actions, but there's so many people who are flying and picking on flying but, as you say, as many other actions that are so high carbon where everyone thinks they're the solution.

51:39

In that sense and you know, I agree, there's no.

51:41

Those people are good and those people are bad.

51:44

That's not how it works. But sometimes when you hear things like that, it's like we need to change some norms around this.

51:48

I think, as much as I agree, it's not about the individual.

51:51

I also think that, like the majority of the flying that I do is for my research, like as a field worker, I can't do my work from my desk.

52:03

It's not an option. A lot of folks can do their research from their desk If they're doing survey work or if they're doing lab-based work.

52:06

It actually does happen where they work every day.

52:09

Mine doesn't. That's not how it works.

52:12

Like I can't describe and do the work that I have to do without physically being on site, and then that's like there's not a whole lot of field workers in sport, and so I think that's kind of quite like Holly Collison's another one and we've had that conversation before of like our research requires us to go.

52:29

That's not common, and so the folks who do have that built into the research model, I think, are those like that I've had the best conversations with around how to be good about it.

52:39

There's a lot of people in academia who just want to go to that place or just attend that conference and that I have a harder time with.

52:45

But I would say I just became the head of the environmental committee for the North American society for sports sociology and like the big conversations we're having right now are okay, great, like what's the online attendance option?

52:56

Because I'd love that to be an option for sport, positive as well for all these conferences around what we do like.

53:02

How do we reduce the obligation to fly, especially when it comes to conferences?

53:08

Yes, and I think particularly for young academics and, I guess, young athletes you know I'm kind of talking about them in tandem it's so important that you show up, because that's how you build a reputation, but then maybe both as a sign of privilege, but also to the more established names.

53:20

When is it time for you to pull back? Because when you're a late stage researcher, flying to a conference isn't going to change your career, but for a 21 year old it might do, and particularly with field work.

53:30

I agree with you, if we want the level of depth and again you raised the question of should it be you first Like question the word sustainability.

53:43

It's in the name of this podcast, it's in the name of almost all of anything me and you have ever written.

53:48

What's going on with this word? Because I feel like it's losing its meaning and I might even change the name of the podcast.

53:55

I mean like, yeah, I lost all its meaning years ago, right, so I continue to use it.

54:00

I think people have a positive view of sustainability.

54:04

The sense that people get when they hear it is that it's a good thing, and I think there's something potent in that and powerful that we should not just totally kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater.

54:13

But at the same time I hate it, and I will use the word hate.

54:17

I don't use it often. I hate the word sustainability, and here I am as, like the climate girl B, it doesn't mean anything anymore.

54:24

It did. It did right when the Club of Rome wrote about it in the 70s and it was kind of the early days of thinking about sustainability in this forward sense.

54:33

And it meant two things. It meant taking care of the needs of everybody right now Everybody, not just some people who are privileged everybody.

54:40

And it meant looking into the future and taking care of future needs to make sure that folks indefinitely will have access to resources they need to live fruitful lives.

54:50

Now I don't think we've done either one of them very well.

54:53

I think the term got co-opted in the 80s in the free market era.

54:58

Economics started coming in, so we had a huge stretch in the 80s in the free market era.

55:01

Economics started coming in. So we had a huge stretch in the 70s where and I talk about this a little bit in the book actually In the 70s there was a huge push of green laws around the world.

55:11

It's the era of the Clean Air and Clean Water Act in the US.

55:14

China had some of the most radical policies in the world.

55:16

Russia had some really cool stuff going on. The European Union adopted policies, and these were designed to reduce the negative impact that businesses were having on their communities, because they were fouling the commons pretty much everywhere.

55:28

And so laws came into place to protect that, to protect the rivers, to protect the air, et cetera, et cetera.

55:32

And companies freaked out because they were like wait a second, we can't just follow the commons in any way.

55:37

We want to. That doesn't work because this is going to cost us a lot of money.

55:40

Just follow the commons in any way we want to, like that doesn't work because this is going to cost us a lot of money.

55:43

And so in the eighties they start to push for deregulation, they start to push for voluntary action, saying, okay, we're going to come out of the goodness of our heart, and we're going to miss the companies, like we are going to take on sustainability because it's the right thing to do, et cetera, et cetera.

55:57

Well, 35, 40 years on, they haven't.

56:00

That's the truth. And yet they've been involved in every COP, they've been involved in all of the big meetings, They've been at the table, and I think that there's room for them to do more, and we've seen bits of that.

56:12

We've seen examples of organizations like Patagonia, for example, that has dissolved its profit imperative and now donates all of the proceeds to charity.

56:22

Is it perfect? No, Is Patagonia still using some materials that maybe shouldn't?

56:25

Yep. Is it still much operated like a business, except without the profit imperative?

56:29

Yep. But fundamentally, I don't have a problem with business.

56:33

I have this problem with the idea that business and profit imperatives can be sustainable, because they can't be, and I think that this is like the idea of sustainability, including economic growth, is nonsense to me, because, fundamentally, nothing is meant to grow indefinitely.

56:47

If you look to nature, if you look to societies, nothing is meant to grow indefinitely.

56:51

Everything has a maturity point and I don't think that's a bad thing.

56:56

I think a maturity point is actually a great thing If we can learn to the small organizations, family businesses, whatever, like, yes, do it.

57:04

And then, once you reach a point where you're meeting your needs, stop growing, start maturing, and that's going to be a totally different conversation that we have to start having.

57:13

But it's a different form of sustainability. And if we want to move in that direction of maturity as opposed to growth, great, I'm here for it.

57:27

But if, if sustainability is going to continue to be tied to economic growth, I don't think it's possible because, frankly, I don't think that capitalist solutions are going to work for a capitalist problem.

57:32

Yes, and this is where I think, at least in this industry intersection, I wish the sports folks would say let's put the environmental argument first and then the sport argument, because if it's the other way around, you're never going to be satisfied, You're never going to be happy.

57:44

And the two reasons I maybe want to change the name of this podcast is one no one seems to be able to say it and I get it, Obviously I've said it a million times because I've heard myself say it a million times in editing.

57:55

But two I once met a guy who thought that I meant.

57:58

He literally thought oh, you can help me get rid of these environmental activists so I can sustain my sport as it currently is and I'm like well, that is a mistake for me to leave that up into interpretation, because that's literally the opposite of what I want to do.

58:12

I want sport to, as you say, I like the word mature, mature in a way, keep the magic.

58:17

Everyone throws the word magic in sport and obviously it's not a tangible thing, but we've all felt it.

58:26

If you like sport, you felt it and it'll change. It'll come from different places.

58:28

Why does it have to come from, buy this, go there, you know 85 games a year of whatever sport.

58:32

So, yeah, interesting. But now just a tangential point.

58:36

You don't really discuss the growth issue within the book.

58:39

Is this because the difference between, maybe, adaptation or mitigation, or is it slaying the groundwork for some further arguments?

58:46

Part of it's laying the groundwork. Part of it is trying to bring people to the table as opposed to push them away right off the bat.

58:52

I think some of my degrowth ideas and maturity ideas are maybe a little much for some folks right now.

58:57

That's fine. I think they're all going to get there.

58:59

I also think that the you know you'll never catch me calling myself a sport sustainability person.

59:05

I'm a sport ecologist and we use that word intentionally and I talk about that in the book too.

59:13

Like to specify. It's about the environment. It's about relationships and wellbeing within environmental context.

59:16

But like I specifically didn't want to push people away, I want to bring people into the conversation.

59:21

I want to have honest conversations about where we've been and I want to leave the discussion about where we're going a little bit up to people's interpretation right now, because I think there's going to be different versions of how we get there.

59:31

I think that's probably healthy at this stage.

59:33

I think it's going to be about maturity and degrowth in some cases Again, not degrowth for everybody.

59:39

Like there's a lot of folks in a lot of communities that need to continue to grow for a variety of meeting our needs reasons that are very valid and I think that's great, but those are the nuances that I just didn't have space for in the book and in this one, so maybe that's a future project.

59:53

No, exactly, and it's not like there is consensus on post-growth or degrowth amongst even the environmentalists or the political ecologists.

59:59

So while that debate is playing out, we obviously have to stay on the pulse of it and still talk about sport.

1:00:05

But that is all the time I think I will take off you today, maddy.

1:00:08

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for writing this book, and it's coming out in May.

1:00:14

Yeah, may 7th in the US and Canada, may 9th in UK Europe.

1:00:17

Thanks Ben. In UK Europe. Thanks Ben.

1:00:25

That was our episode with Maddie Orr. If you found it interesting, you may want to get yourself a copy.

1:00:30

The link is in the bio and I again encourage you, if you have any thoughts or comments, to reach out to Maddie or myself.

1:00:36

You may have noticed by now that I like talking, but I can listen as well.

1:00:40

The next episode may not be for a little while now, given other outputs, but make sure you do subscribe so you don't miss it when it does come.

1:00:47

And, as always, thank you so much for listening.

1:00:50

I really hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next one.