Prof. Toby Miller
Former Professor at University of California Riverside and New York University. He is author and editor of over fifty books, including Why Journalism?, The Persistence of Violence, How Green is Your Smartphone?, El trabajo cultural, Greenwashing Culture, and Greenwashing Sport.
Email: tobym69@icloud.com
Twitter: @greencitizen
Social, economic, and environmental devastation routinely accompanies the Olympics. Yet the latest organizers proclaimed “principles of moderation, innovation and boldness.” There was even an official Paris 2024 Social Charter. The propaganda included a promise to halve the carbon footprint of its disgraced London predecessor via renewable energy, vegan food, carbon capture, reduced emissions—eschewing air conditioning—and ‘green’ projects in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Relevant environmental data won’t be released until the Fall. What can we say so far?
Carbon Market Watch and éclaircies found Parisian ecological initiatives “incomplete” and official reportage “short of achieving transparency.” Initial claims about carbon neutrality—and beyond—were quietly dropped. Steep price hikes on mass transit followed. Aquatic events were held across the country and in Tahiti, 15,000 kilometers away, with environmental impacts that troubled local and international competitors alike. A cruise ship housed surfers and executive hangers-on. Such craft are ecological disasters.
The promise of no air conditioning in athlete accommodation in Paris was broken: 2,500 cooling units sated vulnerable Global Northerners, who’d threatened to bring their own; Australian Olympocrat Matt Carroll complained, “We’re not going for a picnic.” It certainly wasn’t some church outing for the big man—his annual salary was US $440,000. The Australians kept whining, and a fellow Anglo moaner said, “I need meat to perform.” Vast numbers of dead animals were quickly imported. Food and other waste mounted.
France Nature Environnement obtained a confidential document indicating that corporate sponsor Coca-Cola would distribute 18 million bottles of sugar drinks during the fortnight, more than half made from plastic. And Coke poured the contents into plastic cups (The company was recently named world’s worst plastic polluter, for the 6th time in a row.).
Many events were held in the Seine-Saint-Denis region on the capital’s outskirts, a département marked by poverty, unemployment, immigration, and poor social services, policing, and school safety. Condé Nast Traveler found the Games giving “hope” to Seine-Saint-Denis. But many promised infrastructure projects never came to fruition. Those that did relied on undocumented, exploited migrant labor.
The region did host the Athletes’ Village, where the fact that beds were made of cardboard was a point of pride for organizers—when they weren’t busy evicting people sleeping rough in makeshift cardboard protection across the city, or dealing with the New York Post mocking ‘anti-sex beds’ designed to discipline ‘horny athletes’ prone to ‘orgies.’ (Neighborhood sex workers were “moved on”).
Just a fifth of Village apartments were reserved for post-Games social housing, and the new pool came at the cost of destroying community gardens.
Forget putative Puritanism. This was gentrification–through-displacement, and it also applied in Porte de la Chappelle, site of badminton and rhythmic gymnastics, which experienced “nettoyage social” [social cleansing]. Migrants and homeless people were exiled for the duration.
There was resistance to this brutality. Consider Saccage [havoc], among dozens of critical collectives. Saccage took its name from Paris 2024’s ecological and social destructiveness. It was dedicated to preserving Seine-Saint-Denis, making friends, mutual aid, and relaxation.
The government demonized Saccage as “ultra-left.” The police responded heavy-handedly to all non-violent direct action, arresting dozens of Climate Extinction protestors. An officer who had shot and killed a young man just before the Games was rewarded with duty at the opening ceremony. The collective Stop violence policières à Saint-Denis [Stop Police Violence in Saint-Denis] denounced militarization of the neighborhood. Kick Big Soda Out of Sport focused its ire on the horror to public health done by Coca-Cola, supported by The Lancet.
When France’s rail and fiber-optic services were disrupted, a bewildered state didn’t know whether to blame the Kremlin, local progressives, or a radicalized house marten. Le Figaro decreed the sabotage to be the work of a “paranoid” left. Une delegation inattendue [An Unexpected Delegation] issued a communiqué explaining the transport intervention in anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, pro-environmental terms. Wonderfully, the New York Times deemed the activists “murky.”
We were told that 2024 was not “a sullied country using the Olympics to improve its image,” but “a sullied Olympicsusing a country to decontaminate itself.”
Paris did what global sports have done for sixty years: accelerate destruction, pollution, expulsion, and speculation. Its social and environmental practices set new ‘standards’ of surveillance and police harassment. And the International Olympic Committee continues to operate like a greedy corporation: its managers revel in luxury while most athletes barely make rent.
In Angelique Chrisafis’ words: “the very act of holding a planetary sporting event like the Olympics has to be completely reconsidered if the world is to reach net zero targets in 2050.”
The Games are unsustainable.
They’re illegitimate.
Stop them now.
