Extreme Heat Breaks: The hidden climate story behind the World Cup

For the first time, all 104 matches at the Men's Football World Cup will be stopped for a mandatory three-minute hydration break, halfway through each half. For the first time, a global audience of billions will watch climate adaptation happening in real-time.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson look at what a football tournament, a transit scandal, and an oil war have in common.

Around a quarter of World Cup matches played over the next few weeks are projected to be played in conditions that exceed recommended heat safety limits - twice the risk of the last US-based World Cup, in 1994. Only three of the sixteen stadiums across the US, Mexico and Canada are climate-controlled. This will be a trial for elite players, who can adapt up to a point, but what does this mean for the parks, cages and school pitches where the ‘beautiful game’ actually begins? The Count Us In campaign, Where Football Lives, hopes that this can bring about a conversation: one about how extreme heat will change how we live, and what we love. So, should those three-minute breaks be called what they actually are: extreme heat breaks?

And a World Cup falling during a moment of rising fuel prices is exposing more than just the changing climate. When NJ Transit announced return tickets from central New York City to the nearby MetLife Stadium at $150, up from under $15, it laid bare how poorly served the US public is for transportation. The collision of surge pricing and rising pump prices may not be the catalyst anyone planned - but could it help highlight the benefits that a properly funded public transport system could have?

Elsewhere, the Iran war and the fragility it has exposed in global fossil fuel supply chains may be doing more to accelerate the clean energy transition than any policy has managed. Two forces are driving it: Chinese manufacturing dominance, and what we're calling ‘American foreign policy chaos’. Neither is acting for climate reasons. But the case for a post-carbon future has never been stronger.

None of this looks like the transition we imagined. The question is, are we ready to recognise the moment for change when it arrives, in whatever form it takes? And if change happens, does it matter how we get there?

Learn more:

🌍 Check out Where Football Lives, Count Us In's campaign on extreme heat and grassroots football

⚽ Learn how to do a keepy-uppy / juggle a football on the Where Football Lives record attempt page - or simply learn what we’re talking about

🌡️ Read more from Reuters on the threat of extreme heat at this World Cup

⚡ Read the latest on US transit ticketing prices around the tournament

🔎 Listen to Ian Bremmer on the Ezra Klein Show

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

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