{"id":7015,"date":"2013-12-13T08:37:19","date_gmt":"2013-12-13T13:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/?p=7015"},"modified":"2013-12-01T09:23:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-01T14:23:19","slug":"year-4-month-12-day-13-run-to-the-rock-for-rescue-there-will-be-no-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/year-4-month-12-day-13-run-to-the-rock-for-rescue-there-will-be-no-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 4, Month 12, Day 13: Run To The Rock For Rescue, There Will Be No Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Daily News, on the future of our various forms of sublimated combat:<\/a><\/p>\n

Hockey fans frustrated with the Rangers, Islanders or Devils might find solace in this vision: their players just disappearing, swallowed by ice rinks turned to pools of water.<\/p>\n

As Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler used to ask on \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d \u201cReally?\u201d<\/p>\n

The prospect is broached by a group making a rare foray into public policy: the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, National Football League and U.S. Olympic Committee.<\/p>\n

On the same day Senate Democrats executed the so-called \u201cnuclear option,\u201d the sports folks were meeting under the Capitol with a House-Senate task force on climate change.<\/p>\n

The talk was not of the usual business of preserving antitrust exemptions or fending off calls for better drug testing or safer play.<\/p>\n

It was the impact of climate change, which they all concede, on the future of their sports.<\/p>\n

Without casting their lot with many specific Obams administration policies, the traditionally cautious and risk-averse assemblage conceded the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are great American businesses, great American cultural institutions and there being here means a great deal,\u201d said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a sharp former federal prosecutor and son of a career diplomat who\u2019s made 51 Senate floor speeches on climate change.<\/p>\n

He rightly rails against climate-change deniers and \u201cphony-baloney organizations designed to look and sound like they\u2019re real,\u201d as well as scientists on corporate payrolls \u201cwhom polluters can trot out when they need them.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was fascinating is that he was not surrounded by tree-hugging true believers, but top officials from sports leagues mindful of the diverse politics of their fans, and not big on wading into contentious areas.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t care about any sports other than Quidditch and 43-man Squamish, but this was just too tempting to ignore. December 1:<\/p>\n

Even leaving aside the questions of carbon footprint, fossil-fuel consumption, and the like, the long-term viability of American professional sports is closely tied to our national handling of climate change. Why? Put simply, our national pastimes are a function of our prosperity; the resources of cash, infrastructure and time not earmarked for our immediate survival needs. When long-term sustained drought cripples corn and wheat production, food prices will climb; when extreme storms devastate coastal regions, athletic stadiums will find more immediate utility as emergency housing for thousands of suddenly homeless families.<\/p>\n

And, of course, when the continuity of our lives is increasingly disrupted by the countless small impacts of a transforming climate, we’re going to have less time and energy for all the things we’ve taken for granted that make our lives rich and enjoyable.<\/p>\n

Climate change’s implications will be felt everywhere in our cultural life from baseball to ballet.<\/p>\n

Warren Senders<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Daily News, on the future of our various forms of sublimated combat: Hockey fans frustrated with the Rangers, Islanders or Devils might find solace in this vision: their players just disappearing, swallowed by ice rinks turned to pools of water. As Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler used to ask on \u201cSaturday Night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[160,1252,241],"class_list":["post-7015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-economics","tag-sports","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7017,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions\/7017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}