Climate impacts of sports

The climate impacts of the sports I do are a frequent concern for me. I depend on the weather to do most of my sports. Therefore, the fact that my doing those sports also contributes to emissions and climate change leaves me conflicted.

Being active in inclement weather requires more gear so that I can dress appropriately. Then there’s the travel. Some, like biking and running I can generally start from home. And even though it means that I don’t get to try new paths, especially when running, I generally do this to reduce my impacts. But for paddling, I have to travel to get to training sites and that is almost always by car.

Events are another consideration. Paddling is my most frequent type of event and generally I can carpool, but I’ve also flown to another continent to compete and across the country to train.

In my searching, I didn’t find anything paddling related but I did find an analysis of running and biking by Londoño and Björklund (2026). Unsurprisingly, the impacts of cycling gear are significantly greater than running gear: 286 kg CO2 equivalent compared to 35 kg CO2 equivalent.

The road bike has the highest impacts. But something that didn’t seem to be addressed was longevity. My bike and my cycling shoes have a much longer lifespan than my runners do, so I wonder how that balances over time.

Travel is where I can bring my paddling in. I’m sure it has the biggest impacts of my sports, not because of the equipment which is fairly low and long lasting. In fact, paddling is generally where my runners go to die. But travel to practice and events is by far the most. This is what the researchers found for running and cycling: it’s the travel that has the biggest impacts.

It makes me think of two things. First, how to create more distributed training opportunities? Second, how can events be organized to reduce travel impacts.

I don’t really have answers to either. The researchers discuss how events can be held in locations that facilitate public transportation use. And they talk about having local training camps. But this is where the weather creeps in. Most of the training camps I’ve gone to are held where they are because of the weather. For paddling we need open water. That means either restricting things to a really short season where I am, or travelling elsewhere.

I’m an advocate for sport, but we can’t ignore the impacts.