I will admit right away that I find it difficult to participate in sports at the moment. It almost seems inappropriate. With blows harder than ever, we feel how life on Earth is suffocated by human activity – I’m talking about climate change, not Covid – and yet we continue to celebrate our sports parties as if nothing had happened. The roof is burning, the basement is full and someone starts a soccer match in the living room.
I think sometimes, maybe it’s better this way. All those floods and fires seem to wipe our species and its deadly way of life off the face of the earth. Perhaps the arrival of these disasters, if you do not take into account what perishes in fires and floods, is good news for other species on earth. I can easily tolerate such thoughts, I have no children to leave a mess behind.
If you turn over that slash, then Miyagi whistle for the Zambia-Netherlands match. The copper queens against the lionesses. How ridiculous are those nicknames. Basically what the Netherlands did to the lions was shoot them or lock them up in zoos. In Zambia, copper is what foreign “investors” were pulling from the land a hundred years ago, leaving Zambians, including lions, a polluted desert to live in. Lionesses are against copper queens, historical consciousness cannot be blamed on nickel.
I try to really stay with the sport. The Zambian national football team is number 104 in the FIFA rankings. The danger there is not called climate change, but Barbara Banda. The 21-year-old captain was the first Zambian to play in a European competition – Spanish – last year she was the top scorer of the Chinese championship, and besides playing football, she is an excellent boxer.
Our captain Sherida Spitsy, a mainstay of the Dutch national team, was injured on Monday. It can also forget the Olympics and vice versa. She was allowed to watch this match, and then went home. On social media, someone suggested that she stay as an assistant coach because she means a lot to the group.
If I were Sherida, I would answer, ‘Wipe that off, idiot. Northern Europe floods in midsummer, Amazon now emits more carbon dioxide.2 More than it takes, our survival is threatened and I must pretend that nothing is wrong here? I want to go home to my wife and children. See what we can do to help curb this climate problem. Maybe I should go into politics. We’ll be vegetarians anyway.”
Fortunately for Holland I am not Sherida. I’m just at home trying not to think about climate change while watching women’s Olympic football on a screen with solid copper from Zambia. Sweden-US finished 3-0 by defeating the world champion.
The Zambia-Netherlands score is not known when I write these words, but when you read it it is. The situation varies with climate change: the results are known as we write and read and despite the clear final indication, we continue to play.
Carolina Trujillo clerk.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on July 22, 2021
A version of this article also appeared on NRC on the morning of July 22, 2021
Tv fanatic. Freelance thinker. Social media enthusiast. Total bacon lover. Communicator.