The U.S. Olympic team is one of a handful that will supply air conditioners for their athletes at the Paris Games in a move that undercuts organizers’ plans to cut carbon emissions.
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland said Friday that while the U.S. team appreciates efforts aimed at sustainability, the federation would be supplying AC units for what is typically the largest contingent of athletes at the Summer Games.
“As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” Hirshland said. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Britain were among the other countries with plans to bring air conditioners to France.
A society can’t be run on smartphones, this was patently obvious during the COVID pandemic, when governments had to decide which were the “essential jobs” that society literally wouldn’t keep running without. Were these the smartphone jobs? Or was it agriculture, education, transport of goods, supermarket cashiers, infrastructure, and trash collection among many others?
I’m fully aware that SOME people can get rich using a smartphone. Hell, I’m a lucky individual who had access to high level studies, and who fortunately enjoyed STEM, and my life is pretty dope, I consider myself very successful. I’m just not stupid enough to think that’s a sustainable, or even desirable model of society, where SOME people can be “successful” (assuming that your metric of success is income) by moving around numbers in investment funds or programming databases so that banks can surveil us and squeeze a few dollars more out of our pockets.
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