Björn Sandström: Saving winter sports from climate breakdown
Winter sports faces an existential threat from climate breakdown - but its future is all but ensured. Some elite athletes are trying to create a different future for winter sports, where competing on the piste does not come at the cost of the earth. Anna Jonsson from Save Our Snow and Badvertising Sweden sat down with Swedish elite skier Björn Sandström to discuss how he is approaching climate action within winter sports.
Photo by Máquinas Pisanieves [Flickr]
For starters, what is your relationship with snow?
It's so hard to enjoy something so beautiful and know that it will soon disappear if we don't rapidly accelerate the transition. It's like being at a last family dinner, where you know you won't see any of your family for a very long time. It is still a beautiful meal, but the knowledge that you only have a few hours left with each other cannot be shifted.
How did you start skiing? And how did your journey into environmentalism begin?
Skiing was already part of my life during childhood. It was just something we did. We went cross-country skiing several times a week: on the ski trail, on the mountain, in the forest. I grew up in the USA, in Missoula in the state of Montana, and as an 8–9-year-old I started telling the bus drivers, who let the classic yellow school buses’ engines idle, to turn off the engine. This went on throughout the school year. All but one eventually shut off the engine. Montana is now acutely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A decade ago, it was a question of whether there would be a fire-season each. But now it is a question of when and how destructive it will be.
How do you see the climate issue and the role of sport in it?
My biggest concern about the climate crisis is seeing nature disappear in combination with human naivety. Why has climate science and the media failed to convey the seriousness of climate breakdown and the level of change required to address it? Obviously, the methods we're using right now are not working.
Sport could provide a solution here. By conveying human feelings and by uniting people, sport has communicative power that could provide an effective platform. Sport today takes an important role in relation to LGBTQ+ issues, sporting behavior and anti-doping – themes that are discussed all the time. But what happens to the conditions for our sport? We have to travel criss-cross to find the patches of snow that remain – and when you look around, it's no longer white, cold and beautiful.
Björn Sandström
How do you view fossil sponsorship?
I would like fossil sponsorship to end immediately - just like sport achieved with tobacco advertising. Particularly in winter sports, which are completely dependent on the snow. But a ban on fossil advertising and sponsorship is only a first step, the next step is to stop promoting high-carbon consumption.
You have made it to Font-Romeu in the Pyrenees to do high altitude training in a different way than the traditional way. How did you get there?
The traditional way of carrying out a high-altitude training involves two stays in the Alps or Pyrenees during the autumn, before the start of the season in October-November. The default is to take the flight down. But this autumn my partner and I rented an electric car in Östersund and drove all the way to Font Romeu in the Pyrenees, where we stayed for two months. The entire stay for both of us lands on 1 ton of CO2e instead of 6 tons of CO2e, which includes accommodation and food. I wanted to show that it is possible to conduct elite sports in a different way. The goal is to make it to the World Ski Championships in Trondheim and get in the best shape of my life.
What is your view on Vasaloppet's sponsorship deal with the fossil fuel firm Preem?
The Vasaloppet is such an enormously beautiful event that contributes so much to society. But they are jeopardising all this by promoting Preem. Through the collaboration with Preem, they market the death of their own event and the sport we all love. I would have been extremely happy and proud of Vasaloppet if they scrapped the agreement with Preem.
And Equinor's sponsorship of the World Ski Championships in Trondheim?
During the World Ski Championships, close to a hundred thousand people attend and several million television viewers enjoy the excitement from the comfort of their homes. These viewers will see the Equinor logo time and time again. And it comes with a hidden message: "Oil is OK". But oil is not okay - and it must stay underground. If it doesn’t, and the likes of Equinor continue to pump it, the World Ski Championships in Trondheim will be history.
Emil Johansson Kringstad; Photo: Marthe Haarstad/Greenpeace
How do you see many organizers justifying their sponsorship agreements with the fact that the company in question helps them with their climate transition?
It is part of the standard arrangement for a sponsorship agreement: the company gets exposure through writings such as "we will help in a sustainable transition". But for the companies that sponsor, it's only about exposure - the help that the companies provide is usually primarily PR and beautiful texts about sustainability instead of concrete measures.
What inspires you to ‘walk the talk’ on climate action?
I’m inspired by the idea of making the transition in a way that makes life better for us all – a transition that can inspire and that people can find hope in. With more free time, more closeness and more presence. What gives me hope is that the vast majority of humanity wants progressive climate policy. There's a latent power all over the planet – but that power needs to be unlocked. Sport could provide the key.