Sustainable Swiss Soccer

The world’s third-largest sports event is underway: Euro 08, Europe’s tournament of national soccer teams [cue Europop Soundtrack].

Alongside hooligan-control and Spice-Girl appearances, co-hosts Switzerland and Austria have put sustainable development at the center of their strategic outcomes—as defined on three levels: ecology, economy and society.

Basically, the hosts want to be better off for having held the tournament. This is by no means an obvious goal: Glendale, Arizona lost $2.2 million on this year’s Super Bowl. Massive sports tournaments are basically one-time events, capable of permanently reshaping entire landscapes.

The Alpine hosts’ great insight is that one-time events take place in locations with histories and futures—natural and human—and that events of this variety are only worthwhile in the short run if they’re worthwhile in the long run.

What's really needed here is a new global standard for measuring cost and benefit (like the Genuine Progress Indicator) that can help us count more than money, and the Swiss and Austrians deserve some praise for bringing us a little closer to that goal.

[photo credit: Flickr user 'Host City Salzburg']

Life Imitates Telenovelas

The more you watch Brazilian telenovelas, the fewer children you have.

This according to an amazing working paper (pdf), brought to my attention by my favorite blog, Salon's How the World Works.

The gist of it is that Brazilian soap operas, over a period of forty years, have consistently starred female characters with one or fewer children—far fewer than the Brazilian norm (see table below, taken from the paper).

Here's where it gets interesting. The researchers—Eliana La Ferrara, Alberto Chong, and Suzanne Duryea—then look at the relationship between novella-watching and child-bearing. Since Brazil in this period was wiring the hinterlands, they can map a difference between regions which received a TV signal and those which didn't.

In regions with the signal, the more someone watches those glamorous, single-child soaps, the fewer children she will have. They also can trace a huge incidence in children being named after the stars of the soaps.

No great surprise there: In the US, Aiden (Sex and the City character) has become the 27th most popular boy's name.

Cities Are Good for the Environment

This shouldn't come as a surprise, but cities are efficient. That's why we built cities in the first place, thousands of years ago. Cities require far fewer resources per person.

Still, much of the environmental movement remains fixated on "nature," and for a variety of reasons—Jeffersonian individualism, puritan suspicion of urban decadence, etc.

It's been a matter of some joy for me to see the American evangelical church discover the environment. These are, in many respects, my people, and it's good to see needed change.

Still, my people, by and large, have bought into the contempt for urban life so characteristic of the American soul. The trouble is, almost no American lives a truly rural life: even those of us who live in small towns or exurbs drive long distances, for the purpose of accessing urban amenities. (Like stores, workplaces, entertainment etc.) Basically, we're long-distance city-dwellers.

What we need is a change in expectations. We need to learn to love cities.