Cricket vs climate change

Ian Chappell, the all-time Australian great, has signposted the dangers climate change poses to humanity and, especially, the longest format of the game of cricket

At a time when the potentially disastrous impacts of climate change, especially its subset global warming, are becoming all the clearer with every passing day, it is alarming to note that climate change-denying fundamentalists are not only hunkering down, they are also coming to power in many countries. US President Donald Trump leads the pack.

Given this situation, it is extremely heartening to see a sportsperson of great eminence batting for actions against the kind of ongoing changes to the climate that could literally destroy human civilisation as we know it. Ian Chappell, the all-time Australian great, both as batsman and captain, has signposted the dangers climate change poses to humanity and, especially, the longest format of the game of cricket in a cogently argued opinion piece in ESPNCricinfo.com, the cricket website.

Chappell says that global warming will create weather conditions that will jeopardise players’ (and spectators’ and umpires’, though Chappell didn’t mention them) health in the short term by making them more vulnerable to heat stroke and, in the long term, to skin cancer, a condition he has battled for a long time.

It’s not just a question of health, Chappell pointed out. It’s also a question of the use of water. A lot of it is needed to prepare and maintain cricket pitches. In water-stressed cities, and Chappell points to the example of Cape Town, where water had to be rationed a few years ago, such non-essential use of water could become difficult in future.

Chappell quotes from a report, “Game Changer”, prepared by the Climate Coalition in 2018, which says that “of all the major pitch sports, cricket will be the hardest hit by climate change”. One supposes both because of its water-intensity and the long hours many people directly or indirectly involved have to spend out in the open.

Part of this challenge posed to the game has already been met by altering traditional schedules. T20 cricket is played almost entirely after sundown, while significant parts of one-day internationals are played under lights. But Test cricket continues to be played predominantly in natural light, though the beginnings have been made for playing them partially after sunset. “It’s no wonder day-night matches are considered crucial to Test cricket’s future,” Chappell writes. Commercial considerations, in the shape of attracting people to the ground after working hours, doubtless play a major role in this ongoing recalibration.

While Chappell’s concerns are spot on, the shift to day-night schedules is not a panacea. Health concerns will be met somewhat, but not other concerns. The game will remain water-intensive and water-stressed cities may well find it difficult to sustain cricket. Also, day-night matches require the consumption of a huge amount of electricity. In India around 65 per cent of electricity is produced thermally. The massive volumes of greenhouse gases emitted as a result of this — worldwide as well, of course — are a significant contributor to global warming and climate change.

Chappell does not, however, confine himself to the impact of climate change on cricket. His comments take in a much wider swathe of concerns when he writes, “… any disastrous effects on a sport will pale into insignificance when compared with the potential of climate change to inflict devastation on the planet”. Chappell specifically flags the rise in sea levels and increasing incidence of “ferocious weather events like devastating tornadoes and cyclones”.

It is unfortunate that over a quarter of a century since climate change was first flagged multilaterally as one of the key threats to human survival, at the environment conference in Rio de Janeiro, progress on reducing carbon emissions has been agonisingly slow. North America, especially the US, has historically been averse to admitting that such a thing as climate change exists, in the first place. After the Rio conference, then US President George Bush had infamously said that the American way of life was not up for negotiation.

Almost a quarter of a century later, the US first signed up to a global pact on combating climate change when then US President Barack Obama signed the Paris Agreement. In 2017, the US president decided to withdraw from it. It is abundantly clear that without the participation of the US, efforts to combat climate change and mitigate its baneful effects will not be effective.

Australia’s commitment to fighting climate change has hardly been stellar, either. It was one of the few countries to hold out against ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the first multilateral agreement on fighting climate change drawn up in the wake of the Rio conference and the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, effectively superseded by the Paris Agreement, though it finally signed up to the international effort to reduce emissions.

Perhaps that kind of thing was at the back of Chappell’s mind when he wrote, “The effects on climate change … and the solutions rely on decisive action being taken by some annoyingly reticent politicians”. Obstructive, he may as well have added.