Will climate change’s significant impacts on the extreme heat that is expected to descend on the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, which kicks off next Thursday in Mexico City, become a subject that breaks through among players, fans, and media during the the world’s most popular sporting event? Meteorologist and climate communicator Shel Winkley shares how Climate Central, through the recent publication of two studies, aims to garner significant worldwide attention among players, media, and fans by showing how 1) extreme heat will likely impact player performance in the world’s most popular sporting event on site-by-site, game-by-game basis, and 2) […]

Michael Meneshian has become a Green-Sports leader in college athletics in just over a year’s time. The senior on the Cornell University rowing team is one of the driving forces of CSAS — Cornell Student-Athletes for Sustainability — a club that has grown to over 150 student-athletes since its founding in August 2024. And he has worked to accelerate the #ClimateComeback as an EcoAthletes Champion. He took his Green-Sports game to the next level when he became the rare student-athlete to take part in COP30, the often controversial UN annual global climate conference, last month in Belem, Brazil. GreenSportsPod talked […]

Founder and CEO of Sport Positive. Forbes contributing writer. Green-Sports leader. Force of nature. Claire Poole is all those things and more, as you will hear in today’s wide-ranging GreenSportsPod conversation. We discuss: What led her to launch Sport Positive How this year’s Sport Positive Summit — which takes place October 7-8 in London — will approach the gale force anti-climate action headwinds, powered by Trump 2.0 and other collaborators around the world. The serious personal health issue Claire has faced over the past year, including how she is doing and how her experience has changed her view of how […]

EcoAthletes Champions and longtime pro soccer stars Jasmyne “Jas” Spencer and Savannah “Sav” McCaskill used their complementary skills to great effect on the pitch when they played together with Angel City FC in the NWSL in 2022-23: Jas, a 12 year NWSL vet who now plays with Vancouver Rise FC in the new and exciting Northern Super League, brings the jazz — her otherworldly calmness under pressure allows her to improvise to keep possession of the ball in seemingly impossible spots and ultimately make the pass to set up a teammate or get off her own shot. Sav, now in […]

“I’m a nerd wrapped up in an athlete’s body” So says triple major at Penn State, retired NFL offensive lineman, CEO of The Bridge Eco Village (an innovative mixed use real estate development company that prioritizes environmental justice), motivational speaker, and EcoAthletes Champion Garry Gilliam. He can now add children’s eco-book author to his phenomenal athlete-nerd resume, with the publication of “The Bleacher Garden”, a true life story about Garry’s vision to convert an abandoned high school football field and the bleachers surrounding it into a garden that helps feed the community in his hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Click below […]

With Sunday being Mothers Day, GreenSportsPod brings together four important leaders from different segments of the Green-Sports world, all of whom are first time new moms and all with kids who have not yet reached their first birthdays. They are: The wide-ranging conversation covers dealing with work-mom imbalance, how being a mom impacts their perspectives on working in the Green-Sports space, and much more. Enjoy, please share, and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY! More GreenSportsPod: You can also listen to GreenSportsPod on your favorite podcast platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more) All GSP episodes are archived on GreenSportsBlog. Just click on GREEN SPORTS POD in […]

Pragnya Mohan is a force of nature. India’s #1 ranked woman triathlete brings persistence, drive, strategic savvy, and curiosity to everything she does.  In today’s GreenSportsPod, we discuss Pragnya’s:  Click below to listen to the pod and enjoy! And thanks in advance for sharing it. Pragnya Mohan on the run (Photo credit: Pragnya Mohan) Mohan powers through on her bike Mohan delivers a TED Talk in 2022 (Photo credit: TED) Back to GreenSportsPod: You can also listen to GreenSportsPod on your favorite podcast platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more) All GSP episodes are archived on GreenSportsBlog. Just click on GREEN SPORTS POD in […]

While the Olympics are understandably captivating the sports world, there is a great deal going on in sports outside of the Five Rings, including in the Green-Sports World. One such arena is EV racing. While many leaders are skeptical of battery-powered racing, more and more wise heads in the sport see electric racing as the future of motorsports. We could not think of a better guest to talk about that E-future on this episode of GreenSportsPod than Michele Spiezia, the ‘GM of Everything’ at Ellysium Racing, the racing team that is wholly dedicated to propelling electric vehicles as fast as […]

Games canceled or postponed due to flooding or unhealthy orange-hued skies filled with wildfire ash. Increased injuries, illness, and even deaths suffered by athletes from extreme heat, avalanches and more. Significant economic and cultural losses. These are just some of the impacts climate change is having on global sport now that are delved into in ‘Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Changing Sport,’ the deeply researched and illuminating new book by Dr. Maddy Orr, assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto, and published by Bloomsbury. Given that today is Launch Day for ‘Warming Up,’ we are especially […]

The University of Colorado Buffaloes, often a punching bag over the last two decades, are THE story of the brand new college football season, thanks to the sizzle of new coach Deion ‘Prime’ Sanders and his bravado, and the substance, thanks to Saturday’s shocking 45-42 upset at TCU. Colorado is also in the middle of the year’s biggest off-field college sports story: the dissolution of the venerable Pac-12, the 100+ year-old ‘Conference of Champions’. A massive influx of TV dollars into rival leagues like the Big Ten (starting in ’24-’25, the new home for Pac-12 stalwarts Oregon, UCLA, USC, and […]

Katie Cross is a powerful example of how one person can make a difference. Cross is working to spark a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reductions at scale in a novel way: By using the power of soccer/football and rivalry to incentivize fans to make climate-friendly behavior changes. She is doing so through Pledgeball, her 3-year-old, fast-growing, scientifically-researched-backed startup. So far, Pledgeballers — primarily in the UK so far — have made behavior change pledges equivalent to taking over 4,900 cars off the road. In today’s vibrant, informative GreenSportsPod chat, Cross takes us through the thought and behavioral science […]

At first glance, Fran Reuland has a most unusual resume. She’s played soccer at a very high level for the legendary University of North Carolina Tar Heels, as a pro in Ligue 2 in France and now with the Colorado Rapids in the WPSL. At the same time, she has become an expert on Methane (CH4) — a greenhouse gas with emissions that are exponentially more intense than CO2 — at the Rocky Mountain Institute. And she’s an EcoAthletes Champion. Yet as you listen to our GreenSportsPod conversation, you’ll see how some of the skills that allow Reuland to thrive […]

GreenSportsBlog completes its Earth Month coverage with this insightful and fast-paced podcast interview with US Senator Cory Booker. The New Jersey Democrat is a leading voice in the Senate on environmental issues, from climate justice to sustainable agriculture. Sports played a crucial role in Senator Booker’s life as a football scholarship to Stanford helped catapult him far beyond the gridiron. For these reasons and more, EcoAthletes recently inducted him as the fourth member of its Hall of Fame. He joins Green-Sports pioneer Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, climate scientist and communicator Dr. Katharine Hayhoe and legendary sports agent turned climate advocate Leigh […]

GreenSportsBlog continues its Earth Month coverage with this podcast interview with four Rutgers University student-athletes and EcoAthletes Champions: senior gymnast Kaitlyn Bertola, sophomore swimmers Halé Oal and Natalie Schick, as well as sophomore women’s lacrosse player Kelsey Klein. They, along with sophomore star middle distance runner Alex Carlson, are helping to accelerate the #ClimateComeback thanks to a partnership between EcoAthletes and Knights of the Raritan (KOTR), Rutgers’ official NIL collective. KOTR is funding the first ever climate-themed NIL deals with the Rutgers Five. In exchange, the student-athletes will take the lead on several climate-focused initiatives generated by EcoAthletes. These include […]

Did you know that horse shows — and specifically horse show footing has a massive environmental footprint, from water to carbon? I sure didn’t until I spoke with Alex Carr, the strategic marketing and communications leader at ArenaMend, the company she is helping to grow alongside her father, Dan. In today’s GreenSportsPod, Alex takes us through how ArenaMend came to be, it’s greener product offerings and how it plans to disrupt and green horse shows and potentially much, much more..  Click here to listen to our conversation! Alex Carr (Photo credit: Alex Carr) Back to GreenSportsPod: You can also listen to GreenSportsPod […]

The behemoth that is FIFA looks to be ready for Sunday’s kickoff to the 2022 Men’s World Cup, seemingly swatting aside a laundry list of self-inflicted controversies related to the host country of Qatar, including greenwashing charges around organizers’ claims of carbon neutrality (this op-ed from The Guardian is must read on the subject). Why are the Grand Poobahs of world football able to ignore these problems? Because a projected five billion people will watch at least some of the month-long quadrennial ‘festival of futbol’, despite its unfortunate November-December run¹.  Thankfully, like any bloated industry, world soccer is being disrupted by […]

The greening of sports and entertainment venues has been taking place for the better part of the last two decades. Yet two leading lights of the Green-Sports movement, Chris Granger and Kristen Fulmer of Oak View Group, the largest developer and operator of sports and entertainment venues in the world, believe that progress needs to accelerate beyond the tried and true metrics of energy efficiency and waste diversion, to include the broader issues of social impact, climate action, and responsible change. That’s why Granger and Fulmer have teamed up as President of OVG360 (the division of the Oak View Group […]

Brent Suter is a lot of things: Milwaukee Brewers lefty relief pitcher, husband, dad to two young boys, mostly plant-based, EcoAthletes Champion and advisory board member, and Players for the Planet board member. As of today, you can add published children’s book author to his impressive resume as Orange Hat Publishing released the environmentally-themed ‘The Binky Bandit’ in hardcover and paperback. It was illustrated by Jayden Ellsworth. We could not think of a better day to chat with Suter for GreenSportsPod about the book as well as how his environmental and climate activism is being received by his teammates and […]

As some of you may know, a series of close family losses forced me to direct my energies elsewhere over the last month. The kindness of the Green-Sports community, including GreenSportsBlog readers, has been a true blessing and has helped me greatly. Thank you so very much. Now, it is fitting that I get back to blogging and podcasting on Earth Day — a day for both sober reflection as well as a day of hope and action. And with that, I say Happy Earth Day #52! Being “Happy” about the environment, and climate change is a particular challenge these […]

I’ve been wanting to have Claire Poole on GreenSportsPod for a long time. She is the founder and CEO of Sport Positive, convener of the must-attend Sport Positive Summit and the driving force behind the well-regarded and much-covered Sport Positive League sustainability tables. Claire started with the English Premier League in 2019 and added the German Bundesliga in 2021.  Now, Claire has joined the media world with the recent launch of the Climate of Sport podcast. With that being the case, I was thrilled when Claire agreed to have a conversation that would air on Climate of Sport and here […]