Inspired by Joss Garman’s incisive Substack piece on the relationship between global climate action and economic, national and geopolitical security in an era where multilateralism is fracturing we wanted to look at the eroding consensus in support of net zero, the forces shaping climate politics, and how is all relates to sport.
Uneasy Paradox
In the UK and beyond, clubs, leagues, governing bodies and major event organisers know from practical experience that climate change is already disrupting sport. Fixtures cancelled by extreme weather. Facilities damaged. Extreme heat as a health risk for athletes and fans. Rising insurance costs and infrastructure under strain.
The same organisations know that sport is not a bystander. The industry has a material environmental footprint — from travel and energy use to construction, merchandising and consumption. Over the past decade, people and organisations have made strong commitments and – often working with or through BASIS – embraced action on sustainability, with real resources committed and real progress delivered.
Yet the sense of uncertainty is growing — even in those who continue to believe this is the right approach.
Commitments that once felt aligned with public policy and social consensus can now feel exposed. Leaders worry about accusations of hypocrisy. Communications teams worry about backlash. This can all lead to hesitation.
This hesitation, or even deceleration, could be read as a failure of conviction — it isn’t. It’s a failure of context.
To understand where we are, we need to look beyond carbon targets and sustainability strategies, and try to understand the political moment we are living through — including the way sport could be drawn into it.
The Problem with Net Zero
The phrase “net zero” is essentially a technical term masquerading as a public story.
It has helped align governments, investors and institutions. It has created a common reference point for policy and reporting. But it has created a focus on over-simplified targets rather than proper holistic action, and it has never really carried emotional weight. It doesn’t speak to pride, identity, fairness or belonging (the things that actually move people).
More, as climate action increasingly touches everyday life – energy bills, travel habits, infrastructure costs – the language hasn’t evolved. In this context, “net zero” sounds abstract at best, punitive at worst. Something imposed; done to people rather than with them.
This matters because meaningful climate action is not free. It requires investment and change. When costs and choices are poorly explained, they become harder.
Sport is now caught in this tension. Many organisations are taking strong action – reducing emissions, improving efficiency, rethinking operations – but there is reluctance to talk about it. Not because the action is wrong, but because the story around it has become fragile.
Ultimately, while that might feel tactically safe, it’s strategically dangerous: silence does not protect credibility, it creates a vacuum that erodes it.
Energy, Power and the Return of Geopolitics
To understand why the climate consensus is under pressure, we need to widen the lens.
Energy has always been at the heart of geopolitical power. From coal to oil to gas, access to and control of energy has shaped empires, wars and global influence. The low-carbon transition could be seen as a challenge to this order. The universal sources of renewable energy, at least in theory, redistribute advantage.
Yet in reality, it extends and intensifies that order. Because the means of harnessing renewables stimulates both a race and a reaction.
The world’s great powers are placing very different bets. This is overly simplified, but essentially the United States is doubling down on its inherited advantages – oil, shale gas and LNG – treating energy dominance as present-day power. China is positioning — investing at extraordinary scale in electrification, nuclear and clean technologies in order to dominate the future while continuing to burn coal to secure growth and stability today. Europe continues to weaken — caught between dependence on US energy, the long shadow of Russian gas, and an uneasy search for new trade relationships with China as transatlantic trust frays. Meanwhile, the raw materials needed for any genuine energy transition – lithium, copper and other critical minerals – sit largely in the global south, while control of processing and value chains remains concentrated elsewhere.
This is not the coordinated transition many have dreamed of and worked for — it is a contest, which is contributing to the ongoing fracturing of the international system.
The global order is changing, international agreements are weakening, shared rules are harder to enforce and national interest is increasingly framed in zero-sum terms.
When global cooperation falters, climate action becomes very easy to attack. It can be cast as optional, elitist, or economically naïve. None of this changes the science, but it dramatically changes the politics around it.
This is the backdrop against which pressure on net zero in the UK can be more fully understood. We aren’t looking at a technical reassessment, we’re looking at a political recalibration driven by global forces far beyond sport, but to which sport is exposed and could be weaponised.
Sport in the Spotlight
Sport is often described as apolitical. Rubbish. Sport is profoundly political — not because it takes sides, but because it carries meaning.
Global, emotional and visible, sport shapes identity. It reaches audiences that governments and institutions can’t. That makes it both powerful and vulnerable.
It is inevitable that President Trump will seek to harness this summer’s World Cup (dutifully enabled by FIFA’s top boss) as an expression of American supremacy – at least off the pitch. The same could be true for the 2028 Olympics in LA — although given its proximity to the next presidential election, that could be politically charged in a different way, especially if the Democratic Governor of California is running. Closer to home, Euro 2028 is also likely to play out in the context of a looming election. In both of these political battlegrounds, environmental policy has become a serious dividing line.
As climate politics harden, sport becomes an arena in which wider cultural battles are played out. Is sustainability a set of operational choices – good, smart business – or an expression of values? In a world of alternative certainties, silence can be read as retreat, and action as provocation.
Major global sporting events will be judged not only on performance and spectacle, but on how they navigate climate risk, energy use, travel, and infrastructure. The choices made by organisers and partners will be scrutinised, politicised and amplified. Sport will not be able to sit this out.
The Myth of Perfection — and the Reality of Leadership
One of the most corrosive myths in this space is the idea that sport must be perfect to talk about why the environment is important.
It will never be, and it should never pretend to be.
Credibility does not come from claiming the moral high ground. It comes from honesty, transparency and direction, from acknowledging trade-offs, and from acting clearly and positively.
Sport has constantly evolved — commercialisation, the evolution of safety standards, the pursuit of inclusion, and so much more. Progress came through leadership that explained why change was needed and how it would be managed.
Sustainability is no different.
It’s not about defending net zero as a slogan, or ‘doing net zero’ loudly, it’s embracing and explaining what sustainability actually means for sport: resilience, fairness, proper stewardship, and a good plan for action on both climate and nature.
A Resilient Future
That word – resilience – is key.
Financial (protecting revenue stability), environmental (ensuring that pitches, waterways, mountains, coastlines and public spaces remain playable and accessible), and intergenerational (sports organisations as custodians).
It’s about facing risk rationally, and prioritising long-term thinking over short-term political cycles. The going might be tougher, but doing nothing or backsliding is not a strategy, and failing to respond when conditions change is a good way to lose.
The organisations that will thrive over the next two decades will be those that understand that climate and nature are not externalities to be managed at the margins, but structural conditions that shape cost, competition and continuity.
And the benefits of action illustrate its value.
Resilient facilities are more investable. Efficient operations are less exposed to price shocks. Good infrastructure upgrades create local jobs and community benefits. Accessible green and blue spaces underpin participation, physical health and mental wellbeing. Protecting the natural environments on which so many sports depend protects the joy that sustains them.
At its core, sustainability in sport is about protecting the conditions that allow millions of people to do what they love – to play, to watch, to gather, to belong.
A phrase like ‘net zero’ could never fully reflect strategy on that scale, or tell a story that important, but it’s a strategy worth pursuing and story worth telling.
