Go Team Planet!

If We Cared About The Environment Like We Care About Sports

Buzzfeed hit the nail on the head with this one.

Sports are fun and easy to watch. People have pride in their city and root for the local teams. Here in Texas, you can’t walk very far down the street without seeing a Cowboys jersey or car decal. When your team loses, it’s the worst day ever. And when your team sees a win on the grid iron, it’s time to drink, cheer, and post on Facebook.

The opening scene of this video is a group of friends watching Congress pass a mountaintop removal bill, and celebrating the win. And the news channel it’s on is called E-SPAN, a clever combination of C-SPAN and ESPN.

They even have a parody of ESPN’s Around The Horn, where sports journalists argue and analyze teams, players, and sports news. In this video, they argue about the success of the Environmental Agency and their lack of budget. They harness the same passion and energy that sports media and fans have. The same is true for the guys sitting in the bar; it’s usually guys talking about their fantasy football teams, but here, we see an interesting perspective of a heated argument about who is the best American preservationist in history.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court repealed an air pollution rule that was passed by President Obama through the Environmental Protection Agency. They claimed that the restrictions on mercury and other toxic chemicals in power plants were too costly.

Hal Quinn, the National Mining Association President, said:

“The decision effectively puts EPA on notice: reckless

rulemaking that ignores the cost to consumers is

unreasonable and won’t be tolerated.”

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/246423-supreme-court-overturns-epa-air-pollution-rule

Why is money so much more important than our environment? Even the Supreme Court ruled in favor of profits above the planet.Most people don’t know that there are laws being passed that are detrimental to the environment, much less do they care to find out. Even though, these decisions affect all of us.

When this 5-4 ruling against the EPA passed as well as the upholding of lethal injections for executions, Jon Stewart called it a victory for conservatives:

"So yes, gay people have the right to marry, and poor

people have the right to insurance -- but on the bright side,

Americans can still kill prisoners painfully and

everyone else slowly."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/01/jon-stewart-conservatives_n_7703316.html

With these historical cases, Stewart basically says that businesses win, and lungs lose.

The video’s message is pretty clear. Why don’t people care about their ACTUAL cities instead of the athletes that represent them? It’s so easy to follow spectator sports; you literally just have to watch. There’s no interaction or work involved.

Sports fans everywhere contribute to the $400 billion sports gambling industry, and $300 billion of that comes from illegal bookies. During the Super Bowl companies will spend over $3.5 billion just for a 30-second commercial spot.

https://www.capcredit.com/how-much-americans-spend-on-sports-each-year/

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Going into franchises based on (mostly) men’s sports teams and how hard they can hit a ball with a stick, how many times they can place a ball in a hoop, or if they can run past other guys and cross a line with a ball.

What if we could install solar panels on those stadiums, and encourage carpooling and recycling at every event? These are simple fixes that could make a huge impact.

You could say that this is an unfair comparison of apples to oranges. Sports are entertainment and that environmental activism isn’t as exciting. BUT this just proves my point that most people are generally more concerned with being entertained, and too worried about the slow destruction of the world around them.

Look, I enjoy watching my favorite team play just as much as the next person. But, I also realize that without a healthy environment, our planet, our home, our world.. there would be no teams to watch.

We should all be cheering for Team Planet!

And in this case, bandwagoning is totally acceptable.