The Paris Olympics’ Sustainability Efforts Missed the Mark | Opinion

The Paris 2024 Olympic Committee proudly boasted that this year’s games were more sustainable than its predecessors, for a whole host of reasons.

Unfortunately, there were many examples of environmental hypocrisy at the Olympics. One huge problem involved attendees watching as their beverages were poured from plastic bottles into “reusable” plastic cups—a gesture of environmental virtue signaling that many found perplexing. Why not just let people drink from the 6 million bottles rather than creating an additional 6 million plastic cups to accompany them?

Another major concern was the Olympic Committee staying silent about global elites who produce 10 times the pollution per person by flying on private jets to the Olympics. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon took it even further by having the gall to ban his employees from attending the Olympics while he chartered the bank’s private luxury jet to attend a series of parties and events ahead of the 2024 Games.

If the Olympics were sincerely motivated by a commitment to saving the environment, the Olympic torch might have been lit by billionaire Elon Musk in recognition of his innovations that have helped Tesla customers prevent 8.4 million metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere in 2021.

Instead, the Olympics employ the term “environmentalism” in the way ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investors use it, redirecting hard working Americans’ investment dollars to companies that align with their values rather than traditional Judeo-Christian values. Winning a higher ESG score from these biased evaluators is worth millions in investments. Yet, as a landmark investigation found, “The most striking feature of the system is how rarely a company’s record on climate change seems to get in the way of its climb up the ESG ladder—or even to factor at all.”

Once you see through the ESG façade, it’s easier to understand the Olympics’ lip service to environmentalism as being as politically motivated as the morally offensive opening ceremony, which began with a depiction of the Christian Last Supper played by a gathering of drag queens.

However, many Christians and conservatives accept the need for environmental conservation, but see through the deceptive attempt to vilify Judeo-Christian heritage as somehow connected to pollution.

Despite the troubling use of the Olympics to give hypocritical lip service to environmentalism as a cover for a political agenda, this should not detract from the value of watching the Games themselves or for serious discussions regarding conservation. In addition to Musk, American innovators and conservatives like Andy Sabin and Jay Faison lay out real plans for conservation measures including but not limited to flood mitigation.

In a recent interview, Dr. Bill Thierfelder, president of Belmont Abbey College and a former Olympic high jumper, pointed out that despite these controversies, there is value in celebrating the discipline and dedication of Olympic athletes.

Some will attempt to ruin any event by politicizing it. By ignoring the agendas, we can still enjoy the spirit of competition.

John Pudner is a basketball analyst and president of Wisconsin Faith and Freedom Coalition.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.