Super Agent Leigh Steinberg

by Leigh Steinberg via National Football Post

Climate change is here and threatening our way of life.

Rising oceans, weather disasters, polluted air and water are scientifically proven to continue to accelerate. If we don’t want to be the first generation in U.S. history to hand down a degraded quality of life to our children, the time for action is now.

We have formed the Sporting Green Alliance to put sports in the forefront of effecting change. I have met with environmental leaders—Matt Patterson of Global Green, Francis Beinecke of Natural Defense Foundation, Lori David of Million Person Virtual March on Washington and Debbie Levins of Environmental Media—to understand the science. I keynoted the UN Conference on Sports and the Environment in Lausanne, Switzerland to network with global leaders. I have spoken at a series of environmental conferences and met the leaders in new technologies that can make a difference.

Taiwan’s National Stadium is the home of 8,844 solar panels.

We have now aggregated a group of businesses in solar, water, surfacing and recycling that can be taken to stadia and arenas around the country. The goal is to take every stadium, arena and practice facility at the professional, collegiate and high school level and integrate these systems into the buildings and fields. Following that, the next goal is to drop carbon emissions and energy costs and transform these venues into educational platforms.

Hundreds of millions of fans can see a waterless urinal or solar panel for the first time and think about how to integrate these energy-saving devices into their own homes and businesses. By creating displays, fans can have a learning experience. Teams can create small nature reserves in crowded cities—think of a “Jones Forest” or a “Kraft Forest.”

Our last four Super Bowl Parties—which have had a mix of 5,000 opinion leaders in sports, politics, business and entertainment—have been environmental models. Guests enter on a green carpet and there are explanations of energy saving practices and food donations. In Scottsdale, my good friend Congresswoman Gabby Giffords brought then Governor Janet Napolitano to our party and we released an endangered hawk into the wild. In Miami, we shipped off a water purification system to ravaged Haiti that provided clean water to 70,000-140,000 victims a day.

The NFL has taken this issue seriously. They have an environmental executive named Jack Groh tasked with “greening up” the Super Bowl and pushing franchises towards sustainable practice. Individual owners—with Jeffrey Lurie of the Eagles and Jerry Jones of the Cowboys in the lead—have taken steps to certify their stadiums with clean technologies.

People tend to erect a perceptual screen that tunes out messages from authority figures—they may not listen to teachers, commercial advertisements or politicians. But because of our love of sports, athletes and teams can permeate that perceptual screen and promulgate solid values and information.

When I had former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis do a public service announcement that said “Real Men Don’t Hit Woman,” it did more to impact young rebellious adolescents on the issue of domestic violence than the attempts of hundreds of authority figures. When Steve Young and Oscar De La Hoya did PSA’s that trumpeted “Prejudice is Foul Play,” it triggered much discussion.

ICONCowboys owner Jerry Jones (pictured) and Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie are leading the way.

Teams and individual players can make a difference. Warren Moon and I appeared in print ads for the Sierra Club. Bruce Smith lent his name to the Million Person Environmental March. Teams can produce content on all the multiple platforms of content supply.

Think of Saturday morning cartoon shows with sports superheroes fighting for the environment or comic books similarly themed. Television, radio and print can be combined with the tools of social media—websites, twitter, mobile phone technology—to drive the points home. The key to confronting climate change is to retool the energy systems in homes, businesses and transportation to utilize energy saving practices.

In the Middle Ages, heretics were burned at the stake for asserting that the earth was round instead of flat, or that the earth was not the center of the universe. Human beings have an enormous capacity to live in denial of their physical reality. We don’t need to wait until Manhattan, the Bay Area and South Florida are underwater, or destructive tornadoes and hurricanes have become everyday occurrences to face reality. It is now possible to navigate from west to east through what used to be the Arctic snow barrier.

Sports facilities occupy an enormous amount of real estate in this country. Think of every stadium, arena, practice field, soccer field, golf course and track. If that massive amount of land and buildings were to go green, it could make a substantial impact on energy savings and carbon emissions.

For the last forty years, I have been helping athletes retrace their pasts to the high school, collegiate and professional communities that helped shape and support them and establish community and charitable programs. From Rolf Benirschke’s “Kicks for Critters” aiding the fund for endangered species at the San Diego Zoo to Warrick Dunn’s “Homes for the Holidays” moving single mothers into the first home they will ever own, to Ben Roethlisberger donating a game check to Tsunami Relief—they have worked to leave a positive legacy.

Steve Young’s “Forever Young Foundation” helps youth charities and Native Americans. Troy Aikman’s foundation helps young patients in hospitals. Derrick Thomas had “Third and Long,” which promoted literacy in Kansas City Schools.

The daily newspaper reads like the business or crime beat section, with too many negative and discouraging messages. Athletes and teams have a responsibility to utilize their high profile to make a positive difference in the world and to stimulate admirable fundamental values. We are getting ready to launch later this summer and need all help possible. Americans have always responded to crisis by exercising discipline and innovation.

Sports can lead the way to a better tomorrow.

Thought this article was interesting! Lots of initiatives underway to help “green up” pro sports. This outlines the concept of ensuring your “thunder-sticks” or your “spirit towel” are made out of sustainable materials. Maybe an “Angels Rally Money” made out of recycled diapers?!?

The greening of pro sports
A movement is arising to harness the capacity for the sports industry to make a substantial impact on the environment, promote sustainable business practices and influence change upon unusually large masses of people.  What is unique about this opportunity is the infrastructure between the professional sports industry and the population of fans leveraging influence, community, identity, messaging, and critical mass mentality matched only by organized religion and pop culture celebrities.

Interesting article on sustainable major sporting events that was a topic of conversation at this years World Conference on Sport and the Environment in Qatar.

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Click here for the article on olympic.org

How to make sport events truly sustainable was one focus on the last day of the 9th World Conference on Sport and the Environment that took place in Doha (Qatar) from 30 April to 2 May 2011. After participants had learnt about Qatar’s initiatives in integrating sustainability into the planning of sports events, as well as about South Africa’s green projects for the FIFA 2010 World Cup, Fiona Pelham, Managing Director of UK-based Sustainable Events LTD, shared details of a new reporting framework which has been led by sport with the objective that all organisers will be able to monitor, measure and communicate the impact of their events.

Click here for another article from the UN.

In his keynote speech at the opening session UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, emphasised the potential of sport to catalyse innovation and sustainable development, and congratulated the environmental legacy left by major sporting events from Sydney 2000 to Beijing 2008. He added, “I think the story of incorporating sustainability into sports has been one of the inspirational evolutions of the past two decades”.