Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Culture

The U.S. Open Climate Protest Was Annoying. It Also Worked.

Why I changed my mind about the disruption to the tennis tournament.

A tennis protest.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

For a protest to work, it has to be understood.

By this metric, the protesters who interrupted the women’s singles semifinal of the U.S. Open on Thursday night — including one man who glued his bare feet to the floor of Arthur Ashe stadium — had, at least at first, failed. More than 10 minutes into the protest, even after Coco Gauff and Karolina Muchova had left the court to wait out the interruption, retired tennis legend Chris Evert, commentating for ESPN, wondered what the people yelling wanted. “Maybe they’re drunk,” she mused.

Once the protesters’ purpose (and shirts reading “end fossil fuels”) became clear, I couldn’t help but be confused. This U.S. Open has been a famously miserable experience for players and spectators alike, thanks to stifling temperatures that have driven players to take cold showers mid-match and shove courtside tubes blowing cold air down their shirts. The impacts of climate change on tennis couldn’t be clearer than they already are, I figured. Why force the players and spectators to feel those impacts for longer by interrupting a match?

So I came into work on Friday feeling fully opposed to the protest. “Those shirts are going to do it,” I sarcastically texted a friend. “We fixed climate change, everybody.”

And then I saw the Coco Gauff video.

“I believe in climate change,” Gauff said at a press conference after the match. “I 100% believe there are things we could do better.”

Extinction Rebellion, the group behind the protest, said in a press release they weren’t trying to protest against the sport of tennis or even against the emissions that had brought players and spectators to the tournament — instead, they wanted to bring people’s attention to the urgency of climate change.

Gauff’s reaction proves they succeeded. Before the protest, players had complained, often, about the heat. Daniil Medvedev, winner of the 2021 U.S. Open and third seed in the men’s draw this year, turned to a camera at one point during his match against Andrey Rublev to mutter a warning that a player would die. The weather was top of mind for everyone. But climate change? Up until the Gauff interview, the phrase had barely, if ever, come up.

The protestors were annoying (“kick them out,” spectators chanted as police and medical personnel tried to figure out how to remove the man who had glued his feet to the ground; “[expletive] right off, glue boy,” I texted my friend). But for players like Gauff, who at 19 years old is only just at the start of her career, the threat of climate change is too real to ignore, and far more disturbing than a momentary interruption of play.

“Moments like this are history-defining moments,” Gauff said after the match. “If that’s what they felt they needed to do to get their voices heard, I can’t really get upset at it.”

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Podcast

How China’s Industrial Policy Really Works

Rob and Jesse get into the nitty gritty on China’s energy policy with Joanna Lewis and John Paul Helveston.

Xi Jinping.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

China’s industrial policy for clean energy has turned the country into a powerhouse of solar, wind, battery, and electric vehicle manufacturing.

But long before the country’s factories moved global markets — and invited Trump’s self-destructive tariffs — the country implemented energy and technology policy to level up its domestic industry. How did those policies work? Which tools worked best? And if the United States needs to rebuild in the wake of Trump’s tariffs, what should this country learn?

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Energy

A Net-Zero World Will Have Fewer Trade Wars

That’s according to new research published today analyzing flows of minerals and metals vs. fossil fuels.

A handshake and clean energy.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Among fossil fuel companies and clean energy developers, almost no one has been spared from the effects of Trump’s sweeping tariffs. But the good news is that in general, the transition to clean energy could create a world that is less exposed to energy price shocks and other energy-related trade risks than the world we have today.

That’s according to a timely study published in Nature Climate Change on Wednesday. The authors compared countries’ trade risks under a fossil fuel-based energy economy to a net-zero emissions economy, focusing on the electricity and transportation sectors. The question was whether relying on oil, gas, and coal for energy left countries more or less exposed than relying on the minerals and metals that go into clean energy technologies, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and uranium.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Economy

Tariffs Will Flatten the U.S. Bicycle Industry

Businesses were already bracing for a crash. Then came another 50% tariff on Chinese goods.

An e-bike and money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

When I wrote Heatmap’s guide to driving less last year, I didn’t anticipate that a good motivation for doing so would be that every car in America was about to get a lot more expensive.

Then again, no one saw the breadth and depth of the Trump administration’s tariffs coming. “We would characterize this slate of tariffs as ‘worse than the worst case scenario,’” one group of veteran securities analysts wrote in a note to investors last week, a sentiment echoed across Wall Street and reflected in four days of stock market turmoil so far.

Keep reading...Show less
Green