Qatar caught offside

Welcome back to The Strawman, the daily climate newsletter that’s like the person you trust to take a 90th minute penalty in the world cup final. We’re cool under pressure baby.

Today, we’re diving into a scandal that’s gone overlooked from the Qatar world cup - move over bribery scandals, there’s a new sheriff in town. That’s right - Qatar’s world cup campaign is being accused of greenwashing; that too from an unlikely hero.

Let’s dive in.

The first carbon neutral world cup

You have to admit, it’s fantastic marketing. See, a lot of climate protestors railed against the idea of Qatar hosting a world cup - given so much of the state’s wealth comes from oil and natural gas.

Qatar’s answer? Make the world cup carbon neutral.

In theory, it’s a great strategy.

• Step 1: Minimise emissions

• Step 2: Offset all remaining emissions with carbon credits

• Step 3: ???

• Step 4: Profit

Holes in the strategy

When Step 1 of your 4 step plan has issues, you should probably re-evaluate. Saying you’ll minimise emissions sounds good on paper and on the pitch deck your consultants put together, but the thing is, when you say you’re going to do something, you kinda then have to do that thing.

Understandably, minimising emissions is hard to do when you have to build entire stadiums from scratch in a desert, and then operate these stadiums packed with fans.

And that’s not even getting into the issues with the offsets Qatar has claimed. Carbon offsets, although an important tool, aren’t perfect. It’s hard to measurably verify that the offsets you’re claiming actually happened.

According to some analysts, they actually offset less than half of what they needed to, to claim being carbon neutral. That’s like claiming victory at half time - everyone knows the real fun is in the second half.

An unlikely hero

What’s interesting about who’s driving the narrative about Qatar greenwashing their world cup. It’s not a climate group - instead, it’s the Swiss advertising regulator.

That’s right, the Swiss regulator is essentially walking around with a BS detector and when it got to Qatar’s claims about neutrality? Ding ding ding, we have a loser.

It comes down to this - if you’re advertising that the world cup is carbon neutral, then it’s likely some consumers (that’s you and me) were misled when purchasing tickets.

Turns out, advertising regulators might be the heroes we didn’t know we needed…

Until next time,

The Strawman