Play It Green

Misty May-Treanor and partner Kerri Walsh may be the new dream team for the upcoming Olympics. Yesterday, the beach volleyball stars clocked in their 101st consecutive match and their 18th straight title at the AVP’s Long Beach Open. If May-Treanor and Walsh win at the games, they’ll be the first athletes to ever repeat as Olympic champions in beach volleyball.

As is true with water-based athletes (the swimmers, the surfers, the rowers, etc.), the beach-based ones are pretty eco-conscious, too. They can’t help but notice eroding beaches, and May-Treanor has told me when I interviewed her for E that “the signs of erosion are very noticeable” at the beaches where she practices. She related that she and husband Matt Treanor, a catcher for the Florida Marlins, are looking into solar panels for their roof when they remodel their Florida home next year. As one of the few athletes forced to play outdoors (on a reconstructed beach) during the Beijing Olympics, May-Treanor still said she’s not sweating out Beijing’s horrendous air quality issues. “I have played in other cities in China and never had an issue,” she said. In the city’s relentless quest to offer green games and clear skies, Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities, has pledged to cut its traffic in half during the August 8-24 Olympics, and to shutter factories in five surrounding provinces.

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Sports are full of inspiring individual stories, but tend to be slower on collective movements. Social justice and environmental awareness seem a little outside the realm, but that’s changing as the public perception of success and toughness expands to include respect for others—and for one’s own impact. Witness the deference given to the Phoenix Suns’ Steve Nash, who’s dedicated to supporting healthier kids and sustainable living through his foundation versus the skepticism toward the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, who may be a stellar athlete, but hardly a winning role model.

The company Fair Trade Sports is witnessing the revolution-in-the-making as they’re selling out of their eco-certified, fair trade, union-made, vegan basketballs bearing the simple message: Respect. They direct would-be buyers to Gaiam for immediate orders or to sign a backorder list on their site. They have footballs with the message, and soccer balls, and ultimate disc frisbees, rugby balls, and more. In fact, the Seattle company was the first to launch fair trade sports balls in 2006, and to later add eco-certification, using 100% FSC-certified rubber. Design-wise, the balls are cool—not in-your-face-green, but stylish enough to stand out on the playing field. Getting the Nash kind of positive attention.

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I had never heard of the left-wing Jewish Tikkun magazine, until the July/August issue landed in my inbox, and its intersection of “politics, spirituality and culture” strays down the same path as that new agey environmental magazine, Orion, more interested in waxing on (and on) about issues than doing old-fashioned reporting on them. A whole magazine of op-eds feels hollow to me (and, oh, the serious tone, like being lectured one painful page at a time). Anyway, Tikkun devoted some space in their latest lecture series to baseball owners needing to be held to higher standards. I’m kind of liking this position, particularly (as the article notes) because the players have been so scrutinized and publicly whipped for steroid use/gambling/cheating.

Here’s an interesting factoid in the piece, called “The Case of the Giants”: “Congress has also intervened on the business side of baseball to exempt it (alone of all sports) from anti-trust laws and on labor, broadcasting and taxation issues.” The main focus is this: two owners of the San Francisco Giants—Charles Johnson and Sue Burns—are seriously linked with Franklin Templeton funds, which owns some $3 billion of stock in the Chinese energy giants PetroChina and Sinopec. “The oil revenues provided by these two companies alone provide one of the Sudanese government’s few substantial revenue sources,” the author writes, “70-80% of the oil revenue is used to arm and pay the soldiers who are slaughtering people in Darfur.” Which means, the Giants’ owners are complicit in the genocide in Darfur. See how that works?

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As my feature story in the latest issue of E Magazine details, several of the Olympic athlete contenders have decided to focus a little of their blood, sweat and tears on pointing out the nation’s alarming consumption habits. For most of these, it’s like they backed into green issues at the same time as the rest of the country, when confronted unequivocally with eroded beaches, smoggy air and wild weather. Swimmer Aaron Peirsol is one of the more committed of the lot, and a true California water boy at heart (he surfs! even with a discarded McDonald’s tray during a red tide!) And he’s no slacker in the pool, either. Earlier this month, Peirsol set a world record in the 100-meter backstroke at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials against a really formidable group–Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, and Randall Bal. He’s the brand name behind Oceana’s campaign Race for the Oceans–a conservation outlet for swimmers and swimming fans, which includes a blog, and a YouTube video.

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Swimmer Tara Kirk’s environmentalism comes across as more than just a PR strategy. She appears in a striking WildAid video about over-fishing, and speaks out against shark-finning, and, maybe more impressive, is quietly reorienting her life to be more green, even outside of the spotlight. The Stanford University grad keeps a clothesline behind her apartment and tracks her energy savings through California utility Palo Alto Green. Kirk is not a sex kitten like “hottest female athlete” swimmer Amanda Beard, but she’s the down-to-earth relatable one, the almost-I-could-see-myself-there athlete.

But it was Beard, despite insider misgivings, that is headed to the Beijing Olympics, while Kirk placed third in the 100-meter trials. Though both swimmers speak to environmental causes (Beard, too, is a WildAid spokesperson), it is Kirk who strikes me as truly honest. Achingly honest, if you visit her blog.

On July 2, 2008 she writes, poignantly, of losing the trials:

“One one-hundredth. Faster than you can snap your fingers. Faster than you can start and stop a stopwatch (even if you cheat and hit the button against your knee instead of using your thumb). Faster than you can blink your eye. That’s what I missed the Olympic Team by.

But as I looked up at the clock, trying to figure out what exactly had happened, that hundredth might as well have been a year. Because no matter how close I was to second place, the cold reality was that I was third. Third - we might as well call it first loser since first and second go on to the games and third through infinity watch from their couch. There is actually a medal for third place, if you can believe it. I found it nestled amongst my warm-ups after the race. A small consolation for smashed dreams.” 

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In trying to encourage environmentally conscious living, it helps to follow one’s own advice. That’s why Al Gore took such a media flogging when focus turned to his own 80-year-old energy-sucking Tennessee mansion (since renovated to ultra-efficient gold LEED standards), or why I won’t expect to see Bill McKibben pull up to a book signing in a brand new Hummer. I like the latest environmental focus on bicycling (well, really, on 2-wheeled travel of all types with the extravagant fuel costs). There is nothing so free-from-the-emissions-trappings as riding a bike–and it can be communal or solo, exercise or leisurely cruise, rugged adventure or urban commute.

So Brita, makers of the water filter bearing my name, are sponsoring the Brita Climate Ride, the first to call attention to the global warming crisis, by engaging in something which is part of the solution. They are dubbing the Sept. 20-24 350-mile ride from NYC to Washington, DC “a fundraiser, a climate conference on wheels, and a citizen call for action.” The “Climate Riders” include MBA students focusing on sustainability and they are raising funds for Clear Air–Cool Planet and Focus the Nation. And they’re looking for riders.

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