In an unusual procedure, on July 19th the collective 'No JO 2030' submitted an annulment request to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This campaign group opposed to staging the Winter Olympics in the French Alps – 'JO' are the French initials for 'Olympic Games' - urges the IOC to consider France's current candidacy for this event null and void.
According to the group's letter, seen by Mediapart, the first issue at stake is the financial risk for the French regions involved, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in the south east of the country. France has still not signed the financial guarantee by which the host country commits to cover any potential deficits arising from the event. Only a person with the authority to bind the government can sign it. The dissolution of the National Assembly, the subsequent parliamentary elections and the ensuing institutional uncertainty of a hung Parliament have made the timeline for this commitment very unclear.
At the beginning of June, the IOC postponed its vote on awarding the 2030 Winter Games to France to no later than July 24th. “Without a guarantee, we can't make an unconditional decision to award the Games,” noted Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, in L’Équipe sports newspaper on Thursday, July 18th. According to David Lappartient, president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), the budget for the 2030 Olympics is estimated at €1.975 billion – and this is a conservative estimate.
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The other points raised by those opposing the holding of the Olympics include the institutional uncertainty that currently exists in France. In its new post-election configuration, in which no party or coalition commands a majority, the French Parliament could reject the Olympic laws that are essential for approving the event's budget, as well as a whole series of one-off provisions (fiscal, security, urban planning and so on).
In addition, the campaigners attack what they see as the illegality of the French candidacy which, according to them, should have been the subject of a public debate, given the impact of the infrastructure work on local ecosystems. They also warn of the environmental destruction and climate damage that these Games could cause in the now very vulnerable environment of the French Alps.
“This candidacy is at an impasse. We need to find a way out and start afresh,” says Pierre Janot, a member of the collective, a regional councillor, and a lawyer by profession. “We cannot conceive how, in the absence of guarantees, the IOC could award the 2030 Winter Olympics to France, knowing that Sweden's candidacy was dismissed precisely because of Sweden's own refusal to provide these guarantees,” explains another member of the collective, legal expert Delphine Larat, in its letter to the IOC.
It is because of the climate and environmental issues generally that cross-country skier Stéphane Passeron is against staging the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps. A high-level athlete, member of the French team for twenty years, then coach of the French Para Nordic skiing team at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, he is now an instructor in the Champsaur valley in the southern French Alps. Passeron is also part of the delegation asking to be heard by the IOC and here explains to Mediapart why he is now calling for an end to major sporting and cultural events across the board.
Mediapart: What are you asking of the International Olympic Committee?
Stéphane Passeron: We're asking for the withdrawal of France’s candidacy. It's simply unsustainable in terms of finance, climate, the political situation, and a denial of democracy. No one was ever asked for their opinion. Renaud Muselier [editor's note, a politician from Emmanuel Macron's centre-right coalition] was elected [as president of] the PACA region [editor's note, in south-east France] to block the [far-right] Rassemblement National. We all voted for him, including those on the Left and the ecologists. Then he launched a bid for the Olympic Games without consulting any leftwing party. Without us, he wouldn't be president of the region; it would be the RN.
Look around you, everything's collapsing.
We're addressing the IOC so that the committee realises there's a problem in France. Because they keep telling the IOC that everything is fine, that all French people want these Olympic Games. Yet numerous polls indicate that this isn't true. And we want to explain to the French people that the mountains are crumbling and that we can therefore no longer host this kind of event.
Mediapart: Why do you believe the Winter Olympics are incompatible with the climate situation?
S.P.: In June, in Isère, right next to the Barre des Écrins [editor's note, the second-highest peak in the French Alps after Mont Blanc], the old village of La Bérarde disappeared under the rocks. Rain, combined with the melting snow, had formed a lake beneath a glacier which cracked and wiped out the village. This hamlet was well known because it was a departure point for climbers. It’s one of those moments where, when asked why we no longer want the Olympics, we reply: look around you, everything's collapsing.
We can no longer host large events like these, given the global climate situation, whether it’s the football World Cup or even the Tour de France, with its 2,500 cars, ten helicopters and three aeroplanes. There's a disparity between our environmental analysis and our societal choices. Sport has a massive environmental impact.
I'm now a cross-country ski instructor. Last winter, I worked for half a normal season and, even then, it was on an artificial 3 km track. With my ski club, we went skiing thirteen times in the Champsaur valley, in the southern Alps – and that's at an altitude of 1,500 metres. Out of those thirteen sessions we did ten on that 3 km track. In the morning it was ice, in the afternoon it was slush.
The Vercors [editor's note, a range of mountains next to the Alps] had no snow all winter. The Transjurassienne, a well-known cross-country skiing event, was cancelled. There's no more snow. And we can’t say it’s a surprise since the IPCC [editor's note, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has been warning us for a long time. I live in a very small valley. All our hiking trails have been damaged and some have even disappeared. There's a mountain hut at the end of the valley: the access path to it has been washed away. At the bottom of the valley, we've been cut off from the outside world two or three times this year due to massive landslides, because it now thaws in January.
Only the large, high-altitude resorts are managing to cope. Lower down, all the resorts rely on artificial snow. This comes at enormous cost in terms of energy and finance. For the last World Cup events in Grand-Bornand, Haute-Savoie [editor's note, in the French Alps], snow had to be transported by lorries because there wasn’t an ounce of snow. And this is where they want to host the [Winter] Olympic Games?
Mediapart: Wouldn't it be enough for the 2030 Olympics simply to adapt and be held in those high-altitude resorts where there's still snow?
S.P.: That’s what they'll do for alpine sports, which might not use artificial snow. But there are all the other issues: CO2 emissions, the infrastructure that needs to be built. They're planning to build a dual carriageway in the Durance Valley to get up to Briançon [editor's note, in the High Alps] where they're planning a freeride [skiing] and snowboard hub. There'll also be snow cannons, car parks, helicopters.
They claim they'll use 95% of existing infrastructures, but the ski jump in Courchevel is no longer the right length, so it has to be completely remade. In Nice, they plan to build a 13,000-seat ice rink on land where social housing was supposed to be built.
The Olympic Games are worse than a [skiing] World Cup. Because you can cancel a World Cup if there's really no snow. But you don’t cancel the Olympic Games. So there must be snow. This creates an obligation to ensure you have the means. What's more, there will be in a huge rush, because it’s already 2024, and the Winter Olympics are in 2030. They have five years to build everything. It’s going to be frenzied. But the most serious issue is that it prevents us from becoming resilient.
Mediapart: Why?
S.P.: Because they make the public believe that we can continue as before. But we can’t. That’s all there is to it. And this is where it goes beyond the scope of these [Winter] Olympic Games. The Olympics are just a moment, a part of the world. But they reflect what's happening globally. I have two children. My youngest has taken part in ski races. She's quite good. She stands on her podium with her little skis, very happy.
Just as we talk about making agriculture local, we need to make sport local.
And I had tears in my eyes. Because she had won, because I was proud, because I thought: she loves this. And there will be no more snow. This is where we are, and they continue to think it will work out.
This [Olympic] candidacy is a way of carrying on as before. We'll build houses, property prices will skyrocket, even though we can no longer afford housing in the Alps because it's become too expensive. They tell us that this candidacy is to promote the Alps, even though we're already swamped with tourists. In Briançon, they're closing schools. Meanwhile, the number of second homes is exploding. Scientific facts and the IPCC report show that we will face a 4°C increase if we continue like this, and they keep insisting that it will be fine.
Mediapart: Do you think the idea of the Winter Olympics should be abandoned?
S.P.: Not just the Winter Olympics: we need to abandon major events. Let me tell you a story. In 2010, I was on the plane going to Vancouver for the [Winter] Olympic Games. I had made my career as a skier and had become a coach for the French Para Nordic skiing team. In my mind, things were already shifting. I was beginning to feel uneasy. I was heading in another direction. I was renovating a house in Champsaur, thinking I would head for the hills because the world was in trouble. But, at the same time, I wasn’t letting go. And on the plane taking me there, they showed Al Gore's film, 'An Inconvenient Truth', on the little screen. And that was the jolt. I told myself I would take the team to the Olympics because I’m someone who keeps his word, but that the day afterwards I'd quit and never take a plane again.
I think we need to question every large event, even big rock concerts and major festivals. These consume tonnes of watts on each occasion. If we don’t get people to understand that we can’t continue like this, we won’t succeed. The band Shaka Ponk has decided to stop touring. It’s starting to shift a bit among athletes as well.
Mediapart: What do you say to those who defend the Olympic Games as a great spectacle that brings happiness to people?
S.P.: Just as we talk about making agriculture local, we need to make sport local. Sport is fantastic. And will the enjoyment really be different? We can still find happiness in running a small village course, doing a small ski race, or a little bike race, getting together with about thirty local guys and then having a barbecue afterwards. It’s about a vision of the world. If we don’t want to lose everything, we have to let go of some things.
And we'll perhaps keep things simpler. But will we be unhappier? I took part in a little cross-country race. Now, with my partner, we regularly do small running races. We cycle to the starting point, do the race, eat with friends afterwards, and then go home. It’s great.
Athletes are a reflection of society, neither worse nor better. They have a good time, and the pleasure of the moment takes precedence over a longer-term vision. And when fame comes, you get caught up in it. You're happy, you're on TV. When you're a top-level athlete, people talk to you differently. When you return to your village, everyone congratulates you or sympathises if you haven't had good results. We all try to exist in the eyes of others. If I do what I'm doing right now, it's perhaps because I still need to exist. Now, I do market gardening, I have composting toilets at home. I try to practise what I preach.
I've had fantastic times participating in events like the World Cup. I'm not saying it wasn't good. I'll never say the Olympics aren't amazing. I was there, I felt the atmosphere, the adrenaline I had at the start of a World Cup race. Those were extraordinary moments. But we just can't continue, and I say that with great sadness.
Denial is everywhere. It's very hard. Today [editor's note, the day of the interview, July 17th] the Tour de France was passing through Gap [in south-east France]. People go there because they can get within touching distance of something exceptional. I understand, I get it, I've felt it, I've experienced it. But we just can't do it any more. If you love your children, if you love life, this has to stop, that's all.
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- The original French version of this interview can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter