Thursday, March 01, 2007
Recycling Humour
I wanted to say, "What on Earth" but Autosport beat me to it.
My favorite thing about this story is that in their presentation to the FIA (before the public presentation) Honda said, "We want Formula 1 to be carbon neutral by 2015". And Max Mosley said, "Urm it already is innit?"
Apparently since 1997 the FIA have been offsetting all of the carbon emissions of the cars and all of the flights to the races by building forests in Mexico, but they just kind of forgot to tell anyone.
So Honda had to take that bit out of their presentation. The only sad thing is that Honda Racing itself isn't carbon neutral (all of the manufacturing of the cars etc) and that despite this Earth Car marketing campaign they haven't even pledged to do that themselves.
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I think it's pretty absurd. Formula 1 is the least enviromentally friendly sport there is. Honda might say 'that's exactly why we're doing it', but they're only drawing attention to their own pollutioning. If they didn't like it, why don't they just leave the sport suddenly at the beginning of the season? That would be a big statement.
I'm fairly certain, as James Allen says, that half-way through the season they'll revert to the white and red again.
I'm fairly certain, as James Allen says, that half-way through the season they'll revert to the white and red again.
But Formula 1 isn't the least environmentally friendly sport there is... Weirdly Tennis is.
Basically all of the cars running in all of the races in the year use less fuel than 1 London to New York flight. Flying is the really really big polluter.
The top teir of Tennis and Golf have many many more tournaments a year and so they are far more polluting than Formula 1 to run.
F1 just looks more polluting than some people standing on some grass somewhere. But it actually isn't.
Basically all of the cars running in all of the races in the year use less fuel than 1 London to New York flight. Flying is the really really big polluter.
The top teir of Tennis and Golf have many many more tournaments a year and so they are far more polluting than Formula 1 to run.
F1 just looks more polluting than some people standing on some grass somewhere. But it actually isn't.
But I think you'll agree flying isn't part of the sport. That's an indirect factor, which I think is arguable whether you should include. The players don't have to fly, or attend every tournament. And it depends how many players you include. If you include every single one, even the non-seeded ones, that's like including all the minor formulas.
Cars driving around a track and everything that went into building and running them is more polluting than two people standing on a court hitting a ball - that's the basics of what I was saying.
Cars driving around a track and everything that went into building and running them is more polluting than two people standing on a court hitting a ball - that's the basics of what I was saying.
But you can't really have it both ways. On the one hand you say, "If you include every single one, even the non-seeded ones, that's like including all the minor formulas" and on the other hand you're saying "running them is more polluting than two people standing on a court hitting a ball". Not for nothing but if you think about the number of tennis rackets, tarmac courts, rubber shoes, rubber balls (and flying + driving to games of tennis) that takes place versus all motorsport that takes place there probably is more tennis happening globally than car racing. But that's not really the point.
This was a study by I think Greenpeace and wasn't supposed to show Formula 1 as good or bad it was simply highlighting how bad for the environment all world class sports were. But it had this ranking element to it. And it was interesting because they had an asterisk next to F1 which said the statistic about the car fuel consumption saying that they had added 1 flight to the consumption amount for F1 because of the nature of the sport.
I believe for their calculations they included only the "tour" and for Tennis and Golf included both the male and female tour. I think the essential thing is that "the tour" in tennis has about 30+ venues on it.
They went on in this article (which I'm going to have to find now) to point out the external factors involved in F1 and Golf which basically involve destroying vast parkland areas by putting artificial tarmac or grass on the top. But suggested that the Golf aim of having permanently watered green grass and so on was possibly more costly to the local ecology and water table.
But yes. I understand in essence your point is that one sport is in the isolation of in game activity more wasteful than the other. And effectively that's the emotive way that it looks to the public.
But in reality the top tiers of tennis and golf are both more polluting globally than the top tier of motorsport is. Because of the sheer number of tournaments and people involved.
It all comes back to the simple and most powerful of the statistics. Despite how wasteful it looks those F1 cars are incredibly efficient because they all want to carry the least fuel they can to go faster. And all of the cars driving all of the races in a year uses less fuel than one flight from London to New York. That tells me two things, F1 is more efficient than I thought and planes are really really inefficient.
This was a study by I think Greenpeace and wasn't supposed to show Formula 1 as good or bad it was simply highlighting how bad for the environment all world class sports were. But it had this ranking element to it. And it was interesting because they had an asterisk next to F1 which said the statistic about the car fuel consumption saying that they had added 1 flight to the consumption amount for F1 because of the nature of the sport.
I believe for their calculations they included only the "tour" and for Tennis and Golf included both the male and female tour. I think the essential thing is that "the tour" in tennis has about 30+ venues on it.
They went on in this article (which I'm going to have to find now) to point out the external factors involved in F1 and Golf which basically involve destroying vast parkland areas by putting artificial tarmac or grass on the top. But suggested that the Golf aim of having permanently watered green grass and so on was possibly more costly to the local ecology and water table.
But yes. I understand in essence your point is that one sport is in the isolation of in game activity more wasteful than the other. And effectively that's the emotive way that it looks to the public.
But in reality the top tiers of tennis and golf are both more polluting globally than the top tier of motorsport is. Because of the sheer number of tournaments and people involved.
It all comes back to the simple and most powerful of the statistics. Despite how wasteful it looks those F1 cars are incredibly efficient because they all want to carry the least fuel they can to go faster. And all of the cars driving all of the races in a year uses less fuel than one flight from London to New York. That tells me two things, F1 is more efficient than I thought and planes are really really inefficient.
So I think we agree! Tennis is more polluting on a large scale, but that's not what people see. They see expensively created cars, driven by over-paid drivers, running around for two hours on artificial surfaces. Two men playing on grass is rather less impressive.
Anyway, my absurd point was, tennis players don't have to fly between tournaments, they would walk or swim (or perhaps use formula 1 cars?).
Anyway, my absurd point was, tennis players don't have to fly between tournaments, they would walk or swim (or perhaps use formula 1 cars?).
I suppose a good way of finding out would be to take one sportsman alone from each sport and measure them. Who would pollute more in everything he does in a year - flights to and from games/races, holidays, tests, sponsor events etc? I have no idea, but this might be an interesting comparison.
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