Tag: major league baseball

Interview: Sports Teams Go Green

All kinds of sports teams and venues are looking at more environmentally-friendly business practices. Lester Graham talked with Eben Burnham-Snyder who’s with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council about the new green trend in sports:

Transcript

All kinds of sports teams and venues are looking at more environmentally-friendly business practices. Lester Graham talked with Eben

Burnham-Snyder who’s with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council about the new green trend in sports:


EB: Well, I think for a lot of these sports teams, it’s come down to just
good business practices. You know, a good examples is when we approach
the Phildelphia Eagles in 2004 and said, ‘Hey guys, you’re getting a
lot of your paper from a forest that is a main habitat for the American
eagle. That started a dialogue.


They’re now buying 25% of their electricity from renewable sources,
they’re using recycled paper, and they’re even recycling cooking fat
from the chicken tenders and fries during the game day to run the
stadium’s vehicles on bio-fuels. So, there’s an understanding that you
can still have a good, robust business, a good robust sports business,
and do good for the environment at the same time.”


LG: So how are the big greens, the big environmental groups such as the
Natural Resource Defense Council, working with the sports industry?


EB: Well, we’ve been working a lot recently with major league baseball and
the National Basketball Association. It’s something you’re going to
hear a lot about over the next couple months. We try to work with teams
to try and find out what are some of the best practices they’ve been
using already, with recycling and energy efficiency, and we’re trying
to help all of these sports teams understand… here are the different
steps that you can take to both lessen your environmental footprint and
cut costs.


I think for fans ultimately, that’s a chance for them to yet again
pressure their teams and take that money that they’ve saved and put it
maybe into some free agents.


LG: You know, it seems with teams jetting back and forth across the
nation for games and burning a lot of fuel, we see these huge parking
lots of concrete or asphalt that are sometimes only used once a week
for a season. We’ve got some older stadiums, such as Wrigley Field in
Chicago, using restroom facilities that are basically troughs with
constantly running water, and NASCAR burning lots of fuel, even if it’s
using bio-fuels, it seems there’s little actually being done to make a
real difference for the environment. So how is this movement in sports
anything more than just tinkering around the edges?


EB: Well, you know, listen, there’s only so much that they can do within the current
structure.


But when you have industries, like the ski industry, going 100%
renewable at mountains, when you have places like the Philadelphia
Eagles and their field buying 25% of their energy from renewable
sources, those are actually large steps for industries to be taking,
especially when they’re really aren’t any standards for them right now.
They’re really isn’t any program out there right now to guide them.


So, this is a case where business is really trying to lead government
and let them know that we can do this but we need your help, too. We
need you to set limits on pollution to make it easier for us.


LG: Course there’s an incredible fan base for sports of all kinds and
we’re starting to see some attention drawn to these environmental
issues. For example,Sports Illustrated‘s cover is talking about
global warming, we’re hearing teams talk about this. What will this do
for awareness for the typical sports fan?


EB: Well, I think, as with a lot of the coverage we’ve seen on global
warming over the past couple years, it’s an indication that something
that a lot of people have had sort of a common sense reaction to for
the past few years.


For example, this past winter was the warmest winter ever on record.
People are coming to the realization that things are changing. But
sometimes it’s hard to connect those dots and so when you have
something like Sports Illustrated putting global warming on the
cover, what that does is it helps people who already said, you know
what, I haven’t been able to play pond hockey for the past couple of
years with any sort of consistency. I haven’t been able to go skiing.
You know, there are things that seem to be changing, what’s up?


And then they make that connection. And you know, the more evidence,
the more knowledge that comes out about global warming, I think the
more people you’ll see make those connections in their daily lives and
how global warming and other environmental challenges we face really do
affect them.


Eben Burnahm-Snyder is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He spoke with the Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

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If You Build It… Will They Really Come?

  • Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, OH just before detonation in 2002. The 32 year-old stadium was demolished to make way for a new stadium paid for by a sales tax. (Photo by Eric Andrews)

In cities across the nation, taxpayers are finding themselves facing the same dilemma: cough up big bucks for a new sports stadium… or else. Right now it’s happening in Washington, D.C. as the capital city tries to lure a baseball team. It’s happening in New York where the city’s deciding whether to spend 600 million dollars on a new home for the Jets in Manhattan. The debate is over what the taxpayers get. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Richard Paul takes a look at whether sports stadiums really can hit a homerun for taxpayers:

Transcript

In cities across the nation, taxpayers are finding themselves facing the same dilemma:
cough up big bucks for a new sports stadium… or else. Right now it’s happening in
Washington, D.C. as the capital city tries to lure a baseball team. It’s happening in New
York where the city’s deciding whether to spend 600 million dollars on a new home for
the Jets in Manhattan. The debate is over what the taxpayers get. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Richard Paul takes a look at whether sports stadiums really can hit a
homerun for taxpayers:


It’s sort of funny when you think about it. The most hackneyed rationale you can think of
for building a ballpark is… it turns out… actually the primary motivation when cities sit
down to figure out whether to shell out for a stadium. You know what I’m talking
about…


(MOVIE CLIP – “FIELD OF DREAMS”: “If you build it they will come…”)


Just like in “Field of Dreams.” Put in a stadium. People will show up, see the game, eat
in the neighborhood, shop there, stay overnight in hotels, pay taxes on everything and
we’ll clean up!


(MOVIE CLIP – “FIELD OF DREAMS”: “They’ll pass over the money without even
thinking about it…”)


Here’s the thing though… it doesn’t work.


“In the vast majority of cases there was very little or no effect whatsoever on the local
economy.”


That’s economist Ron Utt. He’s talking about a study that looked at 48 different cities
that built stadiums from 1958 to 1989. Not only didn’t they improve things, he says in
some cases it even got worse.


“If you’re spending 250 million or 750 million or a billion dollars on something, that
means a whole bunch of other things that you’re not doing. Look at Veterans Stadium
and the Spectrum in South Philadelphia or the new state-of-the art Gateway Center in
Cleveland. The sponsors admitted that that created only half of the jobs that were
promised.”


But what about those numbers showing that stadiums bring the state money – all that
sales tax on tickets and hot dogs? Economists will tell you to look at it this way: If I
spend $100 taking my wife to a nice dinner in Napa Valley…


(sound of wine glasses clinking)


Or we spend $100 watching the Giants at Pac Bell Park…


(sound of ballpark and organ music)


…I’ve still only spent $100. The hundred dollars spent at the ballpark is not new money.
I just spent it one place instead of another.


In Washington right now, fans have been told they can keep the Washington Nationals, if
Major League Baseball gets a new stadium that the fans pay for. Washington is a place
was more professional activists, more advanced degrees and more lawyers than it has
restaurants, traffic lights or gas stations. And as a result, it’s practically impossible to get
anything big built. But the mayor’s trying. He wants the city to build a new stadium in
really awful part of town and use baseball as the lever to bring in economic activity. The
reaction so far? Turn on the local TV news…


NEWS REPORT – NEWS – CHANNEL 8
ANCHOR: “Baseball’s return to the District still isn’t sitting well with some folks. One
major issue is the proposal for a new stadium.”


ANGRY MAN GIVING A SPEECH: “Tell this mayor that his priorities are out of
order.”


Turns out that guy’s in the majority. A survey by The Washington Post shows
69% of the people in Washington don’t want city funds spent on a new baseball stadium.
We Americans weren’t always like this.


MOVIE CLIP – SAN FRANCISCO WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “You will want to see the Golden Gate international exposition again
and again in the time you have left to you…”


Today politicians need to couch this kind of spending in terms of economic development
because no one will support tax dollars for entertainment. But there was a time in
America when people were willing to squander multiple millions in public money for the
sake of a good time.


MOVIE CLIP – SAN FRANCISCO WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “Remember: Treasure Island – the world fair of the West closes forever
on September 29th.”


In 1939, in New York and San Francisco, and then again in New York in 1964. they
spent MILLIONS. And the purpose was never really clear. Here’s Robert Moses… the
man who made New York City what it is today… on the 1964 Fair.


REPORTER: “What is the overall purpose of the new Fair?”


MOSES: “Well, the overall stated purpose is education for brotherhood and brotherhood
through education.”


MOVIE CLIP – NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “Everyone is coming to the New York World’s Fair. Coming from the
four corners of the earth. And Five Corners, Idaho.”


Maybe those were simpler times. When people were a lot more willing to let rich men in
charge tell them what was right and wrong. Today, a politician looking to build himself a
monument is going to have to convince people it’s for their own good – and economic
development is the most popular selling point. Looking around these days – more often
than not – it seems voters are willing to rely on a quick fix. Taken together, that’s a
recipe for this kind of thing continuing. After all, when you’re a politician building a
legacy for yourself, a sports stadium is a lot sexier than filling pot holes or fixing school
roofs.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Richard Paul.

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