By: Tim Walters
While the world’s most popular sporting event has always been entangled with business interests, its recent subordination to sites of fossil fuel wealth as hosts, owners, and sponsors of the beautiful game is unprecedented, and alarming amidst the backdrop of a spiraling climate emergency. In his “Play the Game” article, “Trump, FIFA, and the World Cup 2026: A match made in climate hell,” Tim Walters explores the incompatibility of US President Donald Trump’s ecocidal energy policies with FIFA’s green commitments, showing that the USA is ineligible to host the tournament.
In a major policy shift, FIFA did not estimate its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the 2026 tournament, the first time it has not done so since it enacted a slate of bold environmental commitments starting in 2006, commitments which have thus far had virtually no impact on their emitting behaviour. From a public relations perspective this makes sense, since this summer’s World Cup will be the most polluting sporting event in human history by some distance, largely a function of FIFA’s decision to massively expand the competition. In “FIFA’s 2026 World Cup could emit 70 million tons of CO2 with deadly human costs”, Tim Walters fills this void from a degrowth perspective, arguing that the tournament this summer will produce enough CO2 to prematurely end the lives of 70,000 people.