Climate Change Takes Center Stage at Rio Olympics Opening Ceremonies

Lew Blaustein GreenSportsBlog

The Brazilian producers of Friday’s Opening Ceremonies at the Rio Olympics made climate change a significant focus of its pre-Parade of Nations pageantry. With a global audience estimated at 1 billion people, this is undoubtedly the most widely-viewed climate change message ever. This is the power of Green-Sports on steroids. About an hour into Friday night’s Opening Ceremonies at the Rio Olympics, the 75,000+ people at the Maracana Stadium and the estimated one billion TV and online viewers around the world probably thought Al Gore had hijacked the production. That’s because they saw videos that detailed:

• Current impacts of climate change around the world, including the melting of the polar ice caps. The narration took the issue head on: “Heat is melting the ice cap. It’s disappearing very quickly.”
• The extent of global temperature increase from 1850 to the present.
• Expected future effects rising sea levels due to global warming will have on some coastal cities, including Rio.

The message was as powerful as it was clear: The world must do whatever it can to stop climate change, and fast. Read the full blog post.