By Noah Eckstein
GRANÅSEN ARENA, Trondheim — Anyone even casually following World Championships in Trondheim will have noticed the weather. At the venue this week, 180 meters above the city center, Tuesday’s snowstorm, which came in a fraction of a degree above 0 C and dumped heavy snow on tens of thousands of spectators, was just a blip in nearly a full week of liquid precipitation. Trondheim hasn’t received this much rain over a five-day period in March since 1899.
The sprints last Thursday saw a deteriorating, rutted track end the days of a number of athletes. The women’s skiathlon on Sunday and the team sprints on Tuesday both took place under heavy rain; the Norwegian Meteorological Institute repeatedly warned of a serious risk of flooding and landslides in Trøndelag and neighboring regions. And Fennoscandia as a whole is experiencing a historically bad winter, with Norwegian scientists suspecting that this season will supplant 2019/2020 as Norway’s warmest in history.
It would be hyperbolic to blame climate change for every thaw and rain-on-snow event (and World Championships have been warm before; there was scant snow on the ground anywhere in Oberstdorf outside the venue, and Andrew Musgrave raced in Seefeld with no shirt), but the overwhelming scientific consensus is that human emissions are driving climate change, and that climate change is resulting in shorter winters, less snow, and more extreme weather events.
Under Trondheim’s wet skies this week, conversations among athletes and the press corps have veered into issues related to global warming more than they normally might. This is clearly due in part to the dismal weather, but also because American athletes are wearing a World Champs–special race suit, designed in partnership with Protect Our Winters, that depicts a melting glacier.
Above all, though, the catalyst for these conversations has been a controversial, loudly publicized protest planned for the men’s 50-kilometer mass start on Saturday, March 8. Representatives of a Norwegian climate advocacy organization called Folk Mot Fossilmakta — or People Against Fossil Fuels — have for several months in advance declared their intention to disrupt the race by sitting down on the track if race organizers did not meet two demands.
Even readers sympathetic to the need for urgent action on climate change may wonder, why here, and why now? And, more broadly, how does direct action balance the need for calling attention to a cause with a sensitivity to athletes competing in the most important race of their season?
Crucially, a headline sponsor of these World Championships is Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned oil company. Equinor has also long sponsored the Norwegian national ski team.
To the organizers with Folk Mot Fossilmakta, this begs the question of whether — at the pinnacle of possibly the world’s most climate-threatened sport — oil industry patronship is a necessary evil amid shrinking budgets or a particularly egregious collective head-in-the-sand moment.
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To be fair, Equinor is not the only oil company in skiing. The Russians, before they were exiled from the sport following the invasion of Ukraine, prominently displayed fossil fuel company Lukoil’s logo on their race suits and team branding. The Canadian ski team is sponsored by AltaGas. The Aker in Team Aker Dæhlie is Aker Solutions, a broad-based energy engineering firm that nonetheless is underlaid primarily by the oil and gas industry. The world’s largest ski race, the Vasaloppet, is funded in large part by Swedish oil firm Preem.
And in Alaska, the APU Elite Team has a long association with ConocoPhillips, in the news in recent years for its aggressive pursuit of government approval for the enormous Willow oil facility (check out some of Nat Herz’s reporting on that project over at his site, Northern Journal). ConocoPhillips more broadly underwrites a broad swath of Alaskan ski racing, everything from the JNQ series to the flagship Tour of Anchorage citizens race.
But the relationship between Equinor and Norwegian skiing is particularly notable. First, of course, because Norwegians are really good at skiing and also care a lot about skiing. Second because Norway, as an arctic and sub-arctic country, is warming faster than much of the rest of the world; the effects of climate change are exacerbated at the poles.
And just as important, critics say, is the degree to which Equinor has managed to ingratiate itself with a Norwegian society largely unwilling to grapple with the contradiction of funding their welfare state and their public push toward low emissions in large part via the export of huge quantities of fossil fuels to the rest of the world.
In an interview with Nordic Insights earlier this week, Folk Mot Fossilmakta organizers Calum Macintyre and Frida Steinbakk spoke to Equinor’s success in converting advertising dollars into positive public sentiment.
“I think Equinor has been really clever at building a great narrative in Norway,” Macintyre said. “This pervasive sponsorship has been huge in the Norwegian context, much more, I think, than other countries. In Norway, when you see kids running around with the Equinor logo all over their clothes, you’re associating the company with these positive investments.”
And while Equinor has worked to cultivate an image as a climate-conscious and holistic energy company, its bread and butter remains fossil fuels. Despite touting wind farm development in recent years, renewables are still a near-negligible aspect of the company’s energy portfolio, and last year it cut $5 billion from its low-carbon program.
Norwegian World Cup skiers, directly and indirectly reliant on oil money to fund their careers, largely refrain from weighing in. “They’ve grown up basically without the possibility of even thinking about speaking up on climate,” reasons Macintyre. “When you grow up seeing ‘Equinor’ on all of your heroes’ jackets, it just makes it very, very difficult” to say anything.
Folk Mot Fossilmakta’s two demands to the World Championships organizers — to remove the logos of fossil fuel companies from the event and to play a PSA about the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty at the venue — directly address this issue of social saturation.
Both were summarily rejected by the Trondheim 2025 team.
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From other corners of the ski world, advocacy has been, bit by bit, growing louder.
Swedish athlete Björn Sandström raced last month’s 10km classic in Falun with a sock displaying blue-to-red “warming stripes” depicting rising average global temperatures, an action arguably violative of a FIS rule against political messaging on team kits. “But this is not a political message, just pure science,” Sandström told Expressen after the fact.
Beyond the POW race suits, a handful of American athletes have also been speaking out about the significance of a changing climate to both their ski careers and the world at large. Alayna Sonnesyn, reflecting in the mixed zone after the women’s 10km classic earlier this week, said she thinks a lot about “how this sport might not exist in 20 years because of what’s happening.”
And Jessie Diggins, in a conversation with climate activist and organizer (as well as dedicated skier and ski fan!) Bill McKibben just before the championships, spoke to the need for collective and institutional action.
“We have one planet that we all get to live on, and we want to pass it on to the next generation,” Diggins told McKibben. “Individual actions absolutely matter, but large-scale policy changes and massive, massive companies that control a larger percentage of carbon footprint can make a huge, huge change.”
In the world of Norwegian skiing, though, the silence remains deafening. Actually, silence is the wrong word — Simen Hegstad Krüger seemed to sum up the general sentiment of his team, and of the fans lining the trails, in a TV interview before racing in Trondheim began.
“It could get ugly” out on the course, he said of potential direct action by Folk Mot Fossilmakta. “It’s so pointless … I feel like they’re destroying things for themselves.”
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This question — of whether disruptive protest helps or hurts the cause — is something that protest organizers have thought about plenty.
“I think what people need to understand is that change is not coming fast enough,” Steinbakk said. “Disruptive protest is the way to lift this conversation up, and if we’re not lifting it up, we’re not able to tackle it.”
They understand that what they’re doing is not popular, and that athletes’ literal livelihoods are on the line.
“The skiers are in a tricky position when it comes to sponsorship,” Macintyre added. “It’s not easy to get skiing funded. Like, if you’re on the bubble and you speak out against it, you’re off.”
“But there would be no need to disrupt this event,” he continued, “if all the big skiers were saying, Yep, climate change is a super big problem, the fossil fuels are the cause, we cannot allow our events to be sponsored by fossil fuel companies.”
Many athletes empathize, albeit with reservations.
About the planned action, Ben Ogden said after Thursday’s relay, “I personally think it is kind of counterproductive, because if you do the disruptive protest, then you kind of end up on the wrong side of [public opinion], you know?”
But he commended the organizers on their open organizational strategy, which has prioritized media coverage and dialogue over the element of surprise. Indeed, as Herz reported earlier this week, organizers will “share the exact time and location” of their protest in advance with local police, who have stated that they will both promptly step in to stop on-course protests but also ensure that activists’ rights to expression are protected.
“I think what they’re doing is kind of cool,” said Ogden earlier today. “That they’re sort of saying, Hey, this is what we want to do, but maybe there’s a way that we can get the conversation started in a different way, in a way that the athletes are fired up about.”
Andrew Musgrave, the ebullient Scotsman with an oil industry history in his family, agreed with the sentiment.
“There is a reason they’re protesting and there’s a lot of evidence behind why they’re protesting,” he said in the mixed zone following Saturday’s sodden skiathlon. “There is a massive reason they’re doing it.”
But the financial implications are never far behind. “At the same time,” he reflected, “to get the event to go ahead, you need some sponsors and they’re one of the main ones.”
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Gus Schumacher, possibly the most prominent climate advocate in the World Cup field through his activism with POW, has participated in discussions with Folk Mot Fossilmakta throughout the week. Along with other athlete representatives, Schumacher worked to craft a statement balancing support for the organizers’ aims while also protecting athlete safety and respecting the racers’ preparation. As things stand on Friday morning, a letter is being circulated among athletes for signature, but it is still unclear whether buy-in will be sufficient to satisfy the organizers. Whether the protest stays on the sidelines or veers into civil disobedience remains to be seen, as reported by Dagbladet.
In a message to Nordic Insights, Schumacher expressed frustration with the timing and context of these negotiations. “I wish these talks hadn’t needed to make it to the athletes, especially with such late notice,” he wrote. “I’m glad to have these conversations, but there are actors at these World Champs that have more power over this issue than us.”
Macintyre doesn’t necessarily disagree. “It’s a really crazy story that a bunch of top athletes are having to be in negotiations with a group of climate activists during the middle of the World Champs when the organizers have had two months to sort this out.”
That said, Schumacher doesn’t begrudge the organizers. “The talks with Folk Mot Fossilmakta have gone really well,” he wrote. “I hope they’re able to demonstrate peacefully on Saturday without disrupting the race, and without being subject to aggression.”
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No matter what happens Saturday, Musgrave hopes that these conversations are the beginning of the end of skiing’s climate paralysis: “It’s so much easier to just not say anything,” he mused. “But if you just never say anything, then nothing ever changes. Somebody’s got to take a stand at some point in time.”
Will that somebody be him? Who knows. Tune in on Saturday for more.
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Update, Friday, March 7: Folk Mot Fossilmakta and the athlete representatives announced around 11am CET that they had reached an agreement. The athletes’ statement can be found here. In essence, it says that, while they “do not support the proposed method of disrupting the 50km race,” they “acknowledge the concerns of the activists that having fossil fuel sponsorship at one of the biggest events in our sport is contradictory.” The athletes agree to push FIS and event organizers to adopt specific steps to tackle climate change and reduce the influence of the fossil fuel industry in the sport. The two proposals are:
- To develop sponsorship guidelines that prioritize partners who demonstrate a genuine commitment to climate leadership and the long-term future of winter sports.
- For FIS to take a leadership role in climate action by using its voice and influence to advocate for a sustainable future for winter sports. This is done through endorsement of the Fossil Fuel Treaty.
Folk Mot Fossilmakta issued a parallel statement. In it, the activists “acknowledge the bravery of these athletes who are willing to speak out against the fossil fuel industry’s influence and presence in sport.” As a results of the athletes’ commitment, the activists “are canceling the planned disruption of the 50km race on Saturday” in favor of a non-disruptive demonstration on the side of the course.
The athlete statement is signed by 29 skiers, with big names from the U.S., Sweden, and Italy appearing prominently. Circulated only late last night, more signatories may join in the coming days. As it stands, though, the list contains not a single Norwegian name.
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