Watching media coverage of and traveling to the Olympics may only encourage them. Economic development and sustainability are the current rationales for continuing them. It’s enough to make one “go Gauguin”: give up banking and move to Tahiti. Surfing and tsunamis could coincide, much like the tropical storm in Tokyo, even as the claims of carbon neutrality may not be quite true, even for the Paris Olympics.
A proposed Olympic forest in the Sahara still might not offset the onslaught of ocean rise considering the multi-decade planning horizons where being “climate positive in 2030 may be too late. Technically, the opposite side of the world to Paris is Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand. at about 19,000 km. but it is closer to the location of Olympic surfing in 2024.
What we have been witnessing in the Olympics, however stressed by pandemic, is celebration capitalism, complete with a quasi-philanthropic discourse. Such capitalism also highlights the role of value form marxism, where “the physical characteristics of a commodity are directly observable, and they enter into its direct use, but its social form is not thus perceptible nor inherent in the thing.”[7] Mediated social form is thus indirectly perceptible, if at all, much like the aristocratic, kleptocratic expectations of such activity like in the bidding process for the Olympic city choice. This activity’s sustainability bears a structural, family resemblance to the problematic nature of carbon trading as credits (and debits). Intersectionality has a similar family resemblance, articulated with more complex social form when difference itself can be commodified.
Celebration capitalism is disaster capitalism's affable cousin. Celebration capitalism does not "fight for the advancement of pure capitalism" as with disaster capitalism; rather, it proffers the public-private-partnership approach, whereby the state isn't abolished or eviscerated, but leveraged as a font of private profit.
Celebration capitalism allows carbon impacts to be offset by greenwashing, diverting our attention from the kleptocratic corruption that underlies event planning. In the case of the Olympics, it has an enormous scale of media engagement and civic planning. and is the story of urban political economy made more difficult in an age of eco-tourism and pandemic impacts
The Olympics is ”a massive planned economy designed to shield the rich from risk while providing them with a spectacle to treasure.” or as Jules Boykoff has recently written, The Olympics Is a Racket.
Then there is the adjacent compensatory spectacle of paralympics to deflect criticism. This is another of the public-private partnerships that allow for philanthropy and profit in a “full emergence of celebration capitalism… kind of the whipsaw inverse of Naomi Klein’s disaster capitalism.”
As a public-private partnership (3P), the quadrennial Winter and Summer Olympics are about minimizing risk and maximizing surplus value, where failures get absorbed by public funding and debt, rationalized as alternative uses and recycled materials. This includes the bribery and deceit in which the Japanese government engaged to acquire the bid for the Olympic games, even without the threat of cancellation and the message promotion of “recovery” and sustainability.
Then there is the media spectacle as value form, notwithstanding the Olympics projected as a global peace movement. Constructing large scale public structures with less steel is a marginal solution when compared to so many other externalities. Stadium construction in general rarely fulfills its promise in terms of economic development benefits for cities and regions.
The problem remains like having a United Nations site in New York City, that a permanent Olympics venue can be possible considering the forces willing to throw capital at the event. At one level, it is a construction by liberal democracies that often has its troubled political uses in terms of boycotts and sanctions that in the case of Russia, seems altogether toothless. At another level it is a neofeudal, institutional symptom of late capitalism, as anachronistic and contradictory as the 1936 Berlin games. The history of the games once examined closely looks risky for even more cultural reasons, resembling the League of Nations rather than the UN, and replete with “grifters and hereditary aristocrats”.
The 2020 (2021) Olympics in Tokyo
Japan won the 2020 games by bidding $12 billion, pushing out rival Italy to win the hosting spot. But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in the Spring of 2020, and the decision was made to postpone the Olympics to the summer of 2021. The postponement added an additional $2.8 billion to the total outlay, which is estimated to be in excess of $26 billion.
With a summer surge of COVID-19 in many parts of the world, including in Japan, the decision was made to bar spectators.7 Without fans, international tourism will not provide the spending needed to make up for the costs incurred by the Japanese government. While the economic cost will be substantial, the health cost could be even higher. As of July 20, 2021, days before the opening ceremonies, 71 athletes had tested positive for COVID-198. That same week, Japan reported an increase in cases of more than 1,700 cases, a 26% increase over the previous week9.
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“The Recovery Olympics”
A tag line that Tokyo, the host city of the 2020 Olympics, has been using is “Recovery Olympics” for a sustainable future. The “recovery” is primarily referring to the recovery from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the ensuing nuclear disaster in Fukushima, a city in northern Japan. When Tokyo was successful in its bid to host the Games, it estimated that the market effect of the Olympics and Paralympics would be more than JPY 32 trillion in total, which would be a huge boost to Japan’s shrinking economy. Clinging on to this rather optimistic figure, the IOC and the host government were reluctant to make any change to the original schedule in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, and their attitude was criticised as “wildly irresponsible” (Boykoff, 2020).
Besides the cost-benefit analysis of the Tokyo Games, it should be noted that, as of March 2020, nine years after the Fukushima disaster, approximately 48,000 people were still living in evacuation zones in Japan. Despite this, a huge amount of money has been spent on constructing new facilities for the Olympics, rather than aiming to reconstruct “sustainable cities and communities” (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11) in the disaster-hit northern city. Meanwhile, the Tokyo Olympics has been the most over-budgeted Games ever, because of Tokyo’s lax policy.
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First, let’s talk about Tokyo. What’s the story behind the Tokyo games, and why did you write an op-ed in the New York Times arguing they should be canceled?
Jules Boykoff: The backstory with the Tokyo Olympics is essentially that they were built on a double lie.
- In 2013, when then–prime minister Shinzo Abe was standing in front of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) voting members making the pitch for Tokyo to get the 2020 Olympics, he was asked about Fukushima, which in 2011 had experienced the triple-whammy earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. He said at the time that everything was “under control,” and voting members then voted for Tokyo. But things were not “under control” in Japan. That was the first lie.
- The second lie that formed the foundation of the Tokyo Olympics was that they pitched it with the idea of it being the “recovery games,” meaning the Olympics would be a way of helping the disaster-affected areas recover. Nothing of the sort has happened. I’ve interviewed people in Japan, including Kansai University professor Satoko Itani who said that hosting the Olympics actually brought some of the cranes and other materials away from the affected areas.
When the International Olympic Committee handed the games to Tokyo, they did so because they viewed Tokyo as “a safe pair of hands.” But since then the organizers in Tokyo have been bobbling the Olympic torch. It’s been a debacle from the beginning, from hiring celebrity architect Zaha Hadid to design a stadium that was ultimately scrapped because it was too expensive to the plagiarism scandal surrounding the first logo they rolled out — not to mention that there are credible allegations moving their way through the French courts that Tokyo bribed its way into getting these Olympics.
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The 1970s marked a turning point, writes Andrew Zimbalist, author of Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup. The games were growing rapidly, with the number of Summer Olympics participants almost doubling and the number of events increasing by a third during the 1960s. Every Olympics since 1960 has seen major cost overruns [PDF]. The killing of protesters in the days before the 1968 Mexico City Games and the fatal assault on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Games tarnished the image of the Olympics, and public skepticism of taking on debt to host the games grew. In 1972, Denver became the first ... chosen host city to reject its Olympics after voters passed a referendum refusing additional public spending for the games.
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Submitting a bid to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the Olympics costs millions of dollars. Cities typically spend $50 million to $100 million in fees for consultants, event organizers, and travel related to hosting duties. For example, Tokyo lost approximately $150 million on its bid for the 2016 Olympics and spent approximately $75 million on its successful 2020 bid.1
Hosting the games is even more costly than the bidding process. For example, London paid $14.6 billion for hosting the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012. Of that amount, $4.4 billion came from taxpayers. Beijing spent $42 billion on hosting in 2008. Athens spent $15 billion hosting the 2004 Olympics. Taxpayers in Athens will continue to be assessed payments of approximately $56,635 annually until the debt is paid in full.2 Sydney paid $4.6 billion hosting the Olympics in 2000. Of that total, taxpayers covered $11.4 million. Rio de Janeiro is expected to pay over $20 billion by the end of the 2016 Olympics.3
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Many of the arenas constructed for the Olympics remain expensive due to their size or specific nature. For example, Sydney’s stadium costs $30 million annually in maintenance. Similarly, Beijing’s Bird’s Nest arena costs $10 million in annual maintenance.4
It was 2006 before Montreal finished paying off its debt from the 1976 games, and Russian taxpayers will pay almost $1 billion annually for many years to come to pay off the debt from the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.6 Furthermore, note that most of the facilities created for the Athens Olympics in 2004 contributed to Greece’s debt crisis and remain empty.
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Cities pursue the Olympic Games for three important reasons: tourism, image, and regeneration (Heying, Burbank, and Andranovich, 2007). The rise of tourism, and the response to it by nations, is a clear indication that the international economy has changed. The pursuit of leisure, both for its own reward and as part of business travel, is a growth sector of the new economy, and the development of an “infrastructure of play” is often the result (Judd, 2003). In 2005, for example, the Travel Industry Association of America (2006) reported that domestic and international travel added $650 billion to the U.S. economy, generating 8 million jobs, $171 billion in payroll income, and $105 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenues. It is no wonder that cities, states, and the federal government encourage tourism development. At the city level, policy makers attempt to attract travelers through the branding of places and by focusing regeneration strategies to attract investment funds and human capital (Smith, 2007).us.humankinetics.com/...
John Rennie Short, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland, has spoken in the past about the environmental and financial benefits of having the games in a singular location.
Hosting the Olympics in a single location could mean more environmental oversight, especially for governments that do not take climate and environmental issues seriously. The 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia was widely criticized for its negative environmental impact to the region. The Russian government told members of the International Olympic Committee, or IOC, that the games would be “zero waste,” Time Magazine reported. Sadly, the games were anything but.
Construction that led to 2014 was rife with illegal waste dumping, limiting water access for locals, and disrupting the migration routes for regional wildlife. The main event itself was hosted inside of the Sochi National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site that boasts the greatest biodiversity anywhere in Russia.
“The IOC actually made sustainability one of its pillars. But you always have to look at the IOC and what they say and what they do,” he said. “Sochi was a complete disaster.”
[Related: Olympic stadiums are engineering marvels: here are seven standout facilities.]
The IOC does have an extensive Sustainability Strategy that includes a section about the repurposing of materials and offsetting carbon emissions. But the skeletons of former Olympic stadiums dot the globe unused, and the material in them is deteriorating instead of being repurposed for housing and other large events.
Short argued that having a singular location that is vetted extremely carefully with engineers and the input of different conservation groups could potentially stop another environmental blunder in the future. Having a single stadium would make it easier to have quality control and either add on or take off structures. Old buildings could even be retrofitted for other future uses. But, having one location would depend on if the IOC would be open to it, if outside environmental and economic oversight were allowed, and if a country would be willing to allocate the space for an Olympic center.
Short hopes that it can be a possibility one day and feels that the organizing efforts behind a single Olympic village will be worth the time and labor.
“If you had an Olympic-sized Greek island … the place would be a site for international meetings involving everything from math competitions, to folklore to helping young athletes from poorer countries [for training],” Short suggested. “The Olympic Games is the last of this throwaway package mentality. Build this stadium, then move on … it just seems ludicrous in this day and age.”
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Slate described the IOC as a "notoriously ridiculous organization run by grifters and hereditary aristocrats."
Public reception to the Olympic movement's application for funding had been highly negative due to cost concerns after the cost overruns of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and especially revelations about a series of hospitality-related demands that the IOC had reportedly made. The demands notably included "diva-like demands for luxury treatment" for the IOC members themselves, such as special lanes on all roads only to be used by IOC members and cocktail reception at the Royal Palace with drinks paid for by the royal family. IOC also "demanded control over all advertising space throughout Oslo" to be used exclusively by IOC's sponsors, something that is not possible in Norway because Norway is a liberal democracy where the government doesn't own or control "all advertising space throughout Oslo" much of which is privately owned and has no authority to give a foreign private organization exclusive use of an entire city and private property within it.[4] Several commentators pointed out that such demands were unheard of in a western democracy; Slate described the IOC as a "notoriously ridiculous organization run by grifters and hereditary aristocrats."[5][6][7][8]
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Paris 2024 Olympic organisers say the surfing competition will take place in Tahiti - 9,760 miles (15,700km) from the French capital.
The move is subject to validation from the International Olympic Committee, but if approved, athletes will compete on the French overseas territory's Teahupo'o wave in the South Pacific.
Tahiti has been chosen in preference to beaches in south-west France and in Brittany.
Surfing makes its debut at Tokyo 2020.
The French Polynesian island is a 22-hour fight from Paris, and a flight could cost about £2,000 at peak summer prices in 2020.
Tahiti, which is 10 hours behind Paris, is used as a location for the men's World Surf League circuit and Teahupo'o is renowned for being one of the world's biggest waves.
But the venue does not feature on the women's world circuit because the waves there are currently considered too dangerous for women surfers.
The president of Tahiti's surfing federation Lionel Teihotu said they will put plans in place to allow Teahupo'o to also host the women's Olympic surfing events.
"We can put the women on at a time of the day when the waves are less powerful," he said.
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Money thereby directly and simultaneously becomes the real community, since it is the general substance for the survival of all, and at the same time the social product of all. (Marx 1973, 225–6)
[Carbon trading] is going to be bigger than the credit derivatives market. (Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets, Barclays Capital, cited in Horwood2007)
The release of the IPCC report signals how urgent rethinking the nature of large-scale projects like the Olympics, as well as other multi-national efforts in decarbonizing in particular and degrowth in general.
The value-forms are social forms of a product of labor as organized asocially, privately and capitalistically. If the breakfast menu of a capitalistic restaurant chain reads:
then toast has assumed a value form as a product of capitalistically associated labor. But in a household, e.g. when feeding the children, the work of making toast - the same 'useful labor' - is associated differently. No such thought will enter the mind of the toast-maker, who will think directly of the children's needs. Toast will not assume a form of value.
The value forms are also 'forms of appearance' (German sing.: Erscheinungsform). The agents work with them, judge in terms of them, and in a sense measure things with them. The capitalistic organization of life operates through this 'appearance' of itself to its bearers. The value form of a commodity contrasts with its physical features as a 'use value' or good - e.g. as a means of (further) production or as a means of life.[6] The physical characteristics of a commodity are directly observable, and they enter into its direct use, but its social form is not thus perceptible nor inherent in the thing.[7]
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The ecological Marxist Paul Burkett has tried to create a "value-form approach" to understanding the relationship between capitalism and nature. He argues that:
"In short, the value form qualitatively and quantitatively abstracts from nature's useful and life-giving characteristics, even though value is a particular social form of wealth — a particular social objectification of both nature and labor…[174]
By contrast, Elmar Altvater argued that an ecological critique of political economy "hinges on an analysis of use-value".[175]
Focusing on the human metabolism with nature, Kohei Saito argued in 2017 that:
"Marx's ecological critique shows that a certain use value of nature is deeply modified under capitalism in favor of valorization, and that this elasticity of nature is the reason for capital's intensive and extensive exploitation of nature".[176]
John Bellamy Foster stated in 2018 that:
"It is the opposition between the natural form and the value form, inherent to capitalist production, that generates the economic and ecological contradictions associated with capitalist development".[177]
Harry Rothman stated in his 1972 book Murderous Providence that:
"Engels discussed the undialectical attitude to nature of industrialists, whose actions often had unforeseen consequences, such as soil erosion and pollution, adding that nature always takes its revenge if we ignore its laws. However, Engels certainly did not think that we should subordinate ourselves to nature, though we should recognise the fact that we do not ‘rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.’"[178]
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