The U.S. Olympic team is one of a handful that will supply air conditioners for their athletes at the Paris Games in a move that undercuts organizers’ plans to cut carbon emissions.
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland said Friday that while the U.S. team appreciates efforts aimed at sustainability, the federation would be supplying AC units for what is typically the largest contingent of athletes at the Summer Games.
“As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” Hirshland said. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Britain were among the other countries with plans to bring air conditioners to France.
You gotta wonder WTF the French were thinking when they decided to force people into the sweltering insomnia of 80 degrees indoors at night just for the sake of creating the appearance that climate change is the fault of the dispossessed proletariat running air conditioners to survive global heating, and pretending like the owners of the means of production aren’t actually in a position to change how the economy functions.
I would prefer if you used just “owners” or “owners of the majority of wealth”. Owners of production just sounds like old-school socialism propaganda and doesn’t really translate to the current world.
They have simulated conditions in the parts of the accommodation most exposed to the sun and have tested the effectiveness of the cooling system with an objective to keep the indoor temperature between 23 and 26 degrees Celsius (73 and 79 degrees Fahrenheit).
Then it continues with:
The geothermal energy system will ensure that the temperature in the athlete apartments in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb does not rise above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) at night…
They also go on to say that the apartments will be around 11°F cooler than outside temps, which are expected to be over 100°F.
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Let’s just stop for a second and let that sink in. First of all, who keeps their houses up to 79°F at night? Is that a thing in Paris/Europe? Do they have ceiling fans or standing fans to keep the air moving?
That aside, these are athletes who spend their daytime hours sweating their asses off, performing feats us mere mortals couldn’t dream of achieving. And, yet they are expected to “adapt” to have to suffer at night too? Fuck that noise.
I’m all for reducing our carbon footprint, and finding more natural ways to keep cool in the hot summer months. But we also have to be practical and reasonable. I don’t blame those countries for giving France the middle finger and bringing their own ACs.
In the summer, what temp do Europeans keep their homes? When I’ve been in Europe (northern US too) it’s always so hot indoors, summer and winter. I thought it was a low energy use thing until i encountered the crazy indoor heat in the winter.
First of all, who keeps their houses up to 79°F at night?
I do. When I am in Florida, I set my AC to 78 at night but room temperature can go to 80 before the AC kicks in. The key is having a nice ceiling fan. Normally the discomfort comes from hot and humid air hovering around your body (you do make heat). Having a constant breeze on your skin keeps you comfortable.
That said, I am not an athlete trying to achieve my personal best while the entire world is watching. I think it is reprehensible to not provide athletes with a climate controlled environment in which to rest.
OHMYGOSH! I am so glad to meet you! I lived in the South for about a decade and I met so many people who were so opposite of me (having grown up in New England) and I miss them now that I’ve moved away. I will text them. Thanks for the reminder.
The world will continue to get hotter year by year until climate change is solved. I’d fully expect to see more AC use, not less. This won’t be limited just to athletes, but it will be limited by affordability.
Big cities already periodically provide “Cooling Centers” to support the large population of working poor who can’t afford the sky high energy bills. I have no idea what rural communities do during a heat-wave induced brown out. Everyone gets in the lake that’s full of industrial agricultural run off? They retreat into the mines, like a bunch of Morlocks? Y’all just fucking die?
But this is entirely unsustainable long term. Either we find a way to keep our large populations cool during the killer hot months or we stop having large populations all together.
The athletes who get aircon will also be determined by who comes from a wealthy country. Makes a mockery of the games imo, should disqualify them all for having an unfair advantage.
Economic imbalance is baked into the games.
A runner that trains in a state of the art facility with a nutritionist and physiotherapist on call 24/7 will inherently have an advantage over a runner from a poor country that trains in their spare time at the local high school track. Acting like air conditioning is a step too far is silly.
Economic imbalance is baked into the games.
Taking your own air conditioner and rubbing it in the face of those who can’t afford it, in the olympic village where you’re all supposed to be treated the same, is such a glaring display of economic privilege that i find it bothersome.
I’m always embarrassed by Australia spending a fortune on sport and then congratulating ourselves for winning more medals, especially at the commonwealth games where most of the countries are poor.
Yours is an interesting viewpoint. Should athletic competitions also include heat tolerance?
You can’t remove individual differences but there ought to be a level playing field at least at the actual competition. Is it acceptable to provide better accommodation to rich countries? White countries? I think at the games everyone should be treated equally.
Humans ceasing to emit carbon dioxide is inevitable. I reckon this will happen some time before the average global temperature reaches 100 degrees C.
“Humans ceasing to breathe is inevitable”
Climate change will never be solved. It wont even be mitigated.
It will just continue to get worse until it stops being a curiosity the rich invest into solutions (which will never be practical for scale) for positive coverage, and shift their money into their survival plans… Bunkers, Sea Living (under sea or on ships), or space ships to get to lunar colonies or mars.
A small, lucky few of the proletariate might even get selected to be “Saved” along side them, because afterall… the Rich need their menial labor.
And everyone else will suffer and die.
How many carbon emissions will the chartered plans release when they transport all of the athletes and their gear to France?
I wonder how the electrical grid in the Olympic Village will fare when it will be overloaded with probably thousands of unexpected ACs.
And I also wonder what the organizers had in mind when they designed this “low carbon” thing. I assume the houses will be used for other means after this summer - did they expect those people to live without AC, too?
Typical American attitude.
Maybe shutdown just 1 shitty AI company and we can all run AC for a decade.
I think it would be helpful for many people to experience the world without the luxury of ac. It uses a huge amount of power and in most places it’s just a convenience. I haven’t run the AC in something like 18 months not. It’s been in the upper 90s here in the states and my house has gotten up to about 86 inside. I work outside so even a few degrees cooler feels great. At night with a couple fans in the window it goes back down to mid 70s.
I understand that some places get a lot hotter and corporations are to blame for a larger percentage of our climate issue, but we shouldn’t expect to live in luxury while the planet catches on fire around us. All that said I think people would give more of a fuck if they didn’t sit around all day in a climate controlled environment.
I wanna see you going to sleep on 35c and 85% humidity
You’re probably right, better just put my head back in the sand and hope the world burns down around me and leaves me in tact. Guess there’s nothing we can do.
I think it would be helpful for many people to experience the world without the luxury of ac.
steps outside in Texas 110 degree heat index temperatures
No sir. I do not like it. I do not like it one bit.
At night with a couple fans in the window it goes back down to mid 70s.
I was up in Boston recently, and the dry heat of the 80s/90s was not pleasant but bearable. The coastal air brought in a breeze and a bit of shade made a huge difference.
Then I got back down to Houston, disembarked from the plane, and immediately started sweating out my balls like I was in some kind of enormous sauna.
we shouldn’t expect to live in luxury while the planet catches on fire around us
I don’t consider mitigating heat stroke a luxury. I consider it fundamental to my health and productivity. And while I’m the first to admit my shitty ticky-tack house has paper-thin insulation and $500 electricity bills as a result, I’m not going to tell anyone to turn down the AC and flirt with the wet bulb maximum temperature their bodies can allow.
This has to be something we engineer around, not something we just endure as a matter of course. Better building codes. More efficient AC units. More cheap renewable energy and regulation on energy sales during peak usage (fucking staring right at you ERCOT you pack of greedy dick weasels). Denser housing units. More shade and underground development. More locations that can keep temperatures at comfortable levels.
Otherwise a bunch of people are going to suffer and a not insignificant number are going to die as a result.
People aren’t going to do anything about the increasing temperatures of the planet until it affects them directly. When people have no place to run from the heat I expect things would change politically. Sure it could just mean we double down and further fuck the planet, but a bunch of hot and angry people would be more likely to eat the rich in my head. Right now some people are mad about it but as long as they can crawl back into their hole and enjoy some comfort however short sighted nothing will change, and our grandchildren will have to suffer for our insistence on what little luxury we have at this time.
Much of the world will become uninhabitable in the future due to our arrogance and greed. I’m sorry if your choice of living in the desert causes you to suffer disproportionately.
People aren’t going to do anything about the increasing temperatures of the planet until it affects them directly.
Its affecting Houston directly, but we still struggle to do anything about it, because the folks suffering the most are the farthest away from any kind of administrative position.
a bunch of hot and angry people would be more likely to eat the rich in my head
Not if the rich eat them first.
I’m sorry if your choice of living in the desert causes you to suffer disproportionately.
I’m not in the desert, I’m in the swamp.
