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Hi everyone! Tracy and I both traveled to D.C. this week to do some interviews, so no podcast this week. We’ll have content from that trip soon, but the meantime, I thought we could all use a little climate service journalism for the World Cup.
Also, since Saudi Aramco can sponsor the World Cup, I figured—why can’t I? So I’m offering 20 percent off annual HEATED subscriptions for only this weekend. The 20 percent off discount never expires, so if you subscribe this weekend, the rate’s locked in forever!
With it, you’ll get access to HEATED’s archive, select paid content, and our comment section. And you’ll be making climate journalism free for everyone who can’t afford it. Olé!
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This year’s World Cup has something no other World Cup has had before: commercial breaks. This means that each match now contains two three-ish-minute opportunities to absolutely demolish the vibe of the party by talking about things that nobody wants to hear about, but probably should.
Here are three of my suggestions.
“You know, these commercials are only happening because of climate change.”
This will probably be your most natural transition from game to grooaaan. Back in December, FIFA announced that this year’s World Cup would include three-minute hydration breaks for players midway through each half of every match, and that broadcasters would be permitted (but not required) to run commercial breaks during that time.
These mandated water breaks, FIFA said, are due to increasingly intense heat and humidity conditions putting player safety at risk. This overall rise in extreme heat is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, as the New York Times explained Friday:
Since the last time World Cup matches were played in North America in 1994, the world has warmed roughly 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit. And the frequency of extreme heat in June and July has on average tripled across this year’s 10 host cities that previously hosted World Cup games. …
In recent days, the English team has practiced in the Miami sun in an effort to acclimatize its athletes and prepare for what could be one of the hottest tournaments on record. And last month a group of 21 scientists, including physiologists and climate experts, wrote to FIFA, the sport’s governing body, saying that its current safety guidelines for heat were insufficient and “impossible to justify,” and urging it to give players longer breaks and implement “aggressive” locker-room cooling, among other steps.
FIFA has framed these hydration breaks as an attempt to ensure players remain safe. Others have a more understandably cynical interpretation: That FIFA is using player welfare as an excuse to money grab. The breaks are, after all, mandated no matter the weather. It could be cool and raining and commercials would still run.
“This is effectively a parallel to greenwashing, where the use of climate change and the pretence of care for players is used to distort the Laws of the Game and insert commercials,” wrote reddit user Hot-Job-6281 on Friday.
But even if FIFA is exploiting the climate rationale for ad money, the climate rationale still exists. The world is getting hotter, and it is threatening the safety of World Cup players and spectators. An analysis by Climate Central found that climate change is “boosting the likelihood of performance-impairing heat” during 97 of 104 scheduled World Cup matches. It also happens to be making our at-home watching experience super annoying. So do your part: tell your friends. It can’t be more bothersome than the ads themselves… right?
Read more: The 2026 World Cup could be the hottest yet
