Warming Up to the Cold Truth

Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport
Madeleine Orr
Bloomsbury Publishing
May 07, 2024
$37.00

Madeleine Orr’s Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport gives a captivating and timely perspective on the impacts of climate change. The core message of Orr’s book is captured in a Nelson Mandela quote featured in the first chapter: “Sport has the power to change the world, it has the power to inspire.” Warming Up is a call for active stewardship of our planet, using sports as a vehicle to communicate the severity of climate issues.

Orr paints a grim picture of how climate change has and will continue to impact the world of sports. She elaborates on severe weather events, such as heatwaves, storms, and floods, and how they disrupt sporting events and put athletes at risk. Air pollution, responsible for three million deaths, threatens air quality with its “airpocalypse” events. The book highlights the need for the sports industry to address climate crisis and adopt more sustainable practices to reduce its ecological footprint.

Orr, a sport ecologist who is also the founder and co-director of the Sport Ecology Group, has studied the impact of climate change and advises sports organizations on international climate issues. This experience makes her uniquely qualified to offer insights on future environmental trends and mitigation strategies. The trillion-dollar sports industry offers an opportunity for significant and large-scale change in this critical area of environmental protection. In an interview with the American Library of Paris, Orr explains sports are used to teach health benefits and can initiate conversations about climate change. “We need to leverage sport for everything,” she says. “How do we use this platform to deal with the hard stuff?”

She is hopeful for the future, highlighting organizations and initiatives that take action for crucial environmental protection. In 2020, Save the Waves Coalition, a nonprofit that works to protect surf ecosystems across the globe, collected 100,000 signatures and 700 letters of objection in petition against Donald Trump’s “protection structure” around his golf course off the coast of Ireland. The year before, in 2019, Clare County Council approved Trump’s golf course for the builds of 53 holiday homes, a leisure center, restaurant and a ballroom. I found Trump’s proposed plan to be self-serving, and he seemed to prioritize individual interests over the greater good of the land.

Although scientific research and evidence proves the existence of climate change, there are still people, such as Trump, who call climate change a “hoax.” Orr implores her readers not to downplay the threat climate change poses and the fatal consequences of ignoring it. Lack of action would create worse climate catastrophes and perpetuate current issues like melting glaciers, air pollution, and forest fires.

Warming Up provides clear explanations of complex concepts and uses accessible language that readers can easily connect with. For example, Orr writes, “When the storm moved over the Gulf of Mexico before sunrise, it caused a storm surge that pushed forward over land, engulfing the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans under 8ft of water by breakfast.” Her specific detail and use of conversational language paints a visual image that readers can relate to while also emphasizing how quickly the storm occurred. This invokes a personal sense of urgency in the reader.

Warming Up’s exploration of climate change and its human consequences reveals a complex interplay between environmental and societal forces, urging us to consider the broader implications of our actions. Orr looks at social elements such as toxic work environments, conditioned perfectionism, and how athletes are trained to suppress the body’s warnings for heat stroke. These sections are a crucial reminder of the psychological and societal factors that worsen the effects of climate change, especially for athletes.

Climate change impacts everything, even things we might not expect – like sports. Athletes, sports enthusiasts, government and policy makers, and environmentalists can appreciate this thought-provoking book. Warming Up underscores the importance of protecting our natural environment and finding sustainable solutions so sports can continue, and so that our planet can be sustainable for future generations.