The 2026 Winter Olympic Games have once again shown the best the world has to offer when it comes to athletics, but unfortunately, this year the impacts of climate change have also shone through the competition.
The 2026 games, which are taking place in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, saw temperatures as high as 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a climb of 6.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the town first held the games 70 years ago, according to the AP.
Shel Winkley, a Climate Central meteorologist, told the AP the temperature increase is no coincidence and can be attributed to the effects of climate change.
Because of the rising temperatures, the International Olympic Committee has even stepped in and said it will look to move the games up to January instead of February, as the weather conditions have made organizing a challenge for the winter games.
It is no secret that weather conditions are one of, if not the most impactful factors when it comes to the delay or cancellation of athletic competitions, especially when it comes to winter sports, so I cannot say I am surprised by this news.
As early as 1824, when French physicist Joseph Fourier first described the Earth’s natural “greenhouse effect,” the world knew to some extent the mechanism by which climate change occurs, according to the BBC.
As the world industrialized, the large-scale burning of fossil fuels such as coal came with it, meaning that CO2 levels rose dramatically. This significantly sped up the greenhouse gas effect, warming the planet more than ever before.
While the advancements that came from industrialization in terms of efficiency and productivity are undeniable, the rate at which it occurred led to a lot of the consequences that are seen today in our environment.
Polar ice caps are melting, there are severe droughts and worse storms than ever before, water levels are rising and even though we know more about climate change than we did in the past, especially when it comes to how to slow its effects, we are heading in the wrong direction.
The winter games are just one small example of what is changing as a result of our environment being stripped down for parts by big energy conglomerates, who will always care more about turning a profit than the health of our wildlife and the future of humanity as we know it.
It is hard to square news like this with the contingent of people who always like to say that sports and politics should never coexist in the same discussion. Maybe the competitions in and of themselves as isolated events are not political, sure, but the factors that determine when and how athletes can play are now threatened by the impacts of climate change.
If players cannot play as they always have in the way they always have because of an issue that has unfortunately, and continues to be, a political one, then yes, athletic competition will continue being political whether someone wants it to be or not.
In all honesty, the effects that this has on the Olympics are much less worrisome than the lives that have already been lost and homes that have already been destroyed as a result of worsening natural disasters and unpredictable weather patterns.
It all goes to show that even these televised events that many people around the world look to as an escape from the unfortunate realities of today’s political climate are not safe from the environmental climate, and it is something everyone needs to be wary of far beyond this year’s winter games.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
