The Environmental Issue

Doing fieldwork on different WRC rallies produces a variety of experiences. While attending Rally de France-Alsace 2011, this became clear Saturday morning when I read the local news paper Dernieres Nouvelles D’Alsace (DNA). Headlined «C’est parti pour trois jours de liesse – let’s go for three days of celebration», followed by a picture of Seb Loeb driving off the ramp at the ceremonial start at Place Kleber in Strasbourg – it was easy to assume that the rally was a big party with unanimous support from the Alsatian local authorities as well as the general public. One reason, assumingly, was focus on the environment.

Early morning, Alsatian vineyards, a couple of hours before the cars came screaming on the road in the background. Photo: Hans Erik Næss

If you read the press kit from the French Motor Sports Federation (FFSA), it says «right from the launch of the operations linked to the organization of the 2011 Rally France-Alsace, the FFSA has involved all the bodies looking after the protection of the environment». As an example, the organizers refer to a carbon evaluation of Rally France-Alsace conducted in 2010 where they found that it generated 2700 tons of greenhouse gases, the equivalent to two roundtrips by an Airbus between Paris and New York in terms of CO2 emissions.

What was interesting was that 60 % of these rejects were due not to the rally itself, but to the traffic it generated in terms of spectators. FFSA’s solution was to set up a properly adapted public transport service for the Rally France-Alsace 2011 in partnership with the Alsatian territorial communities. Not everybody bought into this, though. In the very same news paper, a string of academics and others launched a scorching critique against the rally. In something resembling an anti-WRC-manifesto available here, they conclude that the rally is a barbaric event representing nothing but a scandalous misuse of money while destroying the environment and glorifying an expat tax refugee (Loeb) as the hero of the day. Ouch.

Either way, as a spectator you actually didn’t notice much of this at all. But given that the majority of emissions came from the traffic generated by the rally, there is one important lesson the organizers should take into consideration. Many of the stages were unreachable unless you travelled by car, and even then you had to walk vast distances. Poor information along the way, for instance how far it was to walk from the parking lot to the stage (something I noticed several families with small children were complaining about), was not helping either. In fact, if one really wanted to cut emissions, better information would ensure that spectators would not get lost all the time!