Connect with us

Latest News

FIFA World Cup to create wealth and CO2 unprecedented

Published

on

Environmental scientists claim that the biggest and most lucrative World Cup ever this summer will also be the most polluted athletic event in history.

“Unlike the case of the Olympic Games, where the carbon footprints have been reducing over the last several editions, this is totally opposite in the case of FIFA men’s World Cup,” David Gogishvili, a geographer at the University of Lausanne (Unil), told AFP.

The summer’s World Cup is bigger than ever, with 48 teams for the first time. It will also for the first time be played in three countries – Mexico, Canada and the United States.

It will generate revenues on an unprecedented scale, but Unil’s research reveals it will “produce the largest carbon footprint in the history of international sport”.

Gogishvili continued: “Unil has calculated that emissions generated by CO2 will be between five and nine million tonnes, compared to “some 1.75 million tonnes” for the Paris Olympics in 2024.

That figure dwarfs the estimated 2.17m tonnes of CO2 produced by Russia in 2018, in a far-flung World Cup that included 40 fewer matches, and the 3.17m tonnes from Qatar in 2022, in a highly compact event condemned for its quickly built, oversized and air-conditioned stadiums.

All 16 venues for this summer, from the “smallest” in Toronto with 45,000 seats to the largest in Arlin­gton, Texas, which has 94,000 sea­ts, were already in place when the Gam­es were given, a point made clear in 2018 by the “United 2026” bid.

The biggest problem is the great distance between stadiums.

Miami and Vancouver are over 4,500 km apart.

That will raise the main source of CO2 emissions for international events: plane travel for teams, officials, media and especially the “more than five million fans” targeted by FIFA.

At least Bosnia-Herzegovina will travel 5,040 km to play group games in Toronto, Los Angeles and eventually Seattle.

‘FIFA’s environmental denial

FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who declared his “determination” to tackle climate change at COP26 in Glasgow, has vowed to “measure, reduce and offset” emissions linked to its World Cups.

FIFA, however, has shied away from making any promises for 2026, after being admonished in June 2023 by the Swiss Fairness Commission (CSL) for false promotion of the “climate neutrality” of the 2022 World Cup.

A strategy to lessen the impact of mega-competitions is to cut their size, said Gogishvili, who was trained as an environmental analyst. The International Olympic Committee has set a quota of 10,500 athletes for the Summer Games.

FIFA, a year after boosting its World Club Cup from seven to 32 teams, is doing the exact opposite by increasing its flagship tournament from 32 to 48 teams.

The climate cost of each international match, is “26 to 42 times greater than an elite match” at the country level, stated a 2025 analysis published by New Weather Institute think-tank.

“A single match in the final stages of the men’s World Cup is responsible for 44,000 to 72,000 tonnes of CO2,” the report’s authors from the British-based Scientists for Global Responsibility claimed.

That, they concluded, was the equivalent of the emissions of 31,500 to 51,500 British cars over a whole year.

“It’s a never-ending cycle of more athletes, more fans, more hotel infrastructure, more flights, because of FIFA’s insatiable appetite for growth,” Gogishvili added.

The 2030 World Cup will be played across three continents and six countries. It begins with three matches in Argentina, Urug­uay and Paraguay before the competition heads to hosts Morocco, Spain and Portugal for the remaining 101 matches.

The 2034 World Cup will be in Saudi Arabia, a Qatar-like environment but 40 more games in a far bigger country. Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil business, became a key FIFA sponsor in 2024.

“It looks like FIFA’s environmental denial will go on,” said Gilles Pache, professor at Aix-Marseille University, in the Journal of Management Research in 2024.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest News

Amazon raised worries about Anthropic AI models before US crackdown, source says

Published

on

By

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was among tech titans who raised security concerns to senior Trump administration officials this week over Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, a person familiar with the subject told Reuters.

Jassy’s presence underscores the dramatic step taken by Anthropic on Friday to shut down its newest models worldwide under national security demands from the administration of President Donald Trump.

The San Francisco-based AI startup, which has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering, had previously warned about hacking capabilities of its Mythos model and held it back from wide release, but earlier this week, Anthropic rolled out a public version, called Fable, with what it described as cybersecurity safeguards.

That brief release was over Friday. In a blog post, Anthropic said the U.S. government notified the company it believes there is a way to bypass, or “jailbreak,” a protection ​against using the model to uncover cybersecurity flaws.

In a blog post, Anthropic said the bypass only revealed “minor” security weaknesses that other publicly available models may find.

The Trump administration told the business to prevent any foreign nationals, inside or outside the U.S., from utilising both its latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, Anthropic stated. Anthropic responded by saying it would block access to the models worldwide.

Amazon will not say if it had spoken to government officials regarding Anthropic’s models.

“It is not unusual for governments to ask us for advice about potential security issues because we are a leading cloud provider serving a large number of customers in the public and private sectors,” an Amazon spokeswoman said. “When they happen, we don’t disclose the details of these discussions.”

EXPORT RESTRICTIONS
Earlier Saturday, tech news site The Information highlighted Jassy’s concerns. The Information later reported, citing a U.S. official, that the administration was unlikely to require other AI companies to adhere to limits comparable to those placed on Anthropic.

Reuters could not immediately confirm plans by the Trump administration to regulate other corporations.

The U.S. government’s prohibitions were an export control, Anthropic stated in its blog post. The Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Commerce Department, which supervises export controls, did not react right away to a request for comment.

Officials issued the export control “reluctantly” after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei “refused” to “fix the jail break or de-deploy the model”, White House adviser David Sacks stated in a social media post on Saturday.

“The hope now is ​that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general ​release,” wrote Sacks, ⁠co-chair of Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and once the White House’s AI czar.

Some advocates of export limits were puzzled by the Trump administration’s move because it also applies to allied nations, not only rivals.

“This wasn’t thought out very well,” said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior scholar at the University of California’s Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation. “It even prohibits Canadians and ​Brits working at Anthropic from doing research and development.”

The directive came as a previous fight between Trump administration officials and Anthropic was simmering down among portions of the U.S. ​government.

Continue Reading

Latest News

Met Office forecasts windy weather in Karachi

Published

on

By

The weather report said that the port city will have hot and humid weather with cloudy sky and maximum temperatures will hover between 34 and 36 Celsius.

Humidity ratio remained 66% in the air in morning which is predicted to remain between 55 to 75% during day, Met Office stated.

After days of searing hot weather with excessive humidity, Karachi reverted to Seabreeze on Saturday.

The sea wind, a critical factor that controls coastal temperatures, returns, making the usually heat-beaten metropolis more bearable. The influx of humid air from the Arabian Sea provides a relief to residents.

Health officials are urging the public to keep taking measures, particularly during the high afternoon hours. Still, it’s best to stay hydrated, not to get direct sun and use sun protection.

Karachi, being coastal, generally depends on the sea wind to keep the excessive heat at bay. The recent interruption of the breeze had sent temperatures soaring and the city was humid enough to feel considerably hotter.

Continue Reading

Business

Aurangzeb says IMF had not asked for a tariff on solar panels

Published

on

By

He disputed allegations that the government had considering taxing solar panels before the budget. ‘There was never any such demand from the IMF and the topic was never discussed,’ he said.

Aurangzeb stated in a media interaction that the government is working on a set of structural reforms in the energy sector to bring down electricity rates, improve the business environment and increase the competitiveness of major industries, according to a federal minister.

In reply to questions on the high energy costs and capacity charges carried over by successive governments, the minister said expensive power continues to pose a serious problem to industry including manufacturing, information technology, mining and other energy-intensive industries.

He said the government, in partnership with Energy Minister Awais Leghari, had already taken steps to remove cross-subsidies for industry and was pursuing changes through wheeling policy and other measures to increase efficiency in the electricity sector.

Read More : Solar panels, inverters, lithium batteries’ prices soar ahead of budget

The government is moving from short-term relief to more extensive, long-term structural reforms, the minister said. These efforts are to be expected to bear fruit in the coming years rather than immediately, he said.

Privatisation of energy distribution companies (DISCOs) is a crucial part of the reform agenda. The minister said three DISCOs had already been awarded expression of interest (EOI) and two more EOIs will soon be awarded. He said he was certain that the first batch of distribution businesses would be handed over to private sector management by the end of the year, with the rest to follow in phases.

There would need to be more regulatory control to accompany privatisation and work was beginning to ensure the regulatory system would be robust and effective, he said.

He also emphasised the ambitions to shift away from the existing single-buyer energy market model, controlled through the Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA), to a competitive multi-buyer system. “The change will help dismantle existing monopolistic structures and improve market efficiency,” he said.

Continue Reading

Trending