Vermont could combat climate change … by hosting the Olympics

Ask any Vermont legislator, and they’ll tell you that two of the issues that have dominated discussion in the last five years are climate change and Act 250 reform.

Multiple ideas have been floated to solve these issues to no avail. But a recent bill in the House hopes to remedy both problems at once. 

The solution? Host the Olympics in Vermont. 

So says Rep. Brian Cina, P/D-Burlington, the author of H.367. The bill would create a Vermont Olympics Task Force to examine the possibility of hosting the Olympic Games and how they could address perennial problems surrounding land use and climate change.

“I have been proposing that Vermont make a plan, like a long-term plan, to reimagine the way that we live on Earth and create a regenerative economy instead of an extractive economy,” Cina said. 

Several years ago, Cina caught wind of Olympic Agenda 2020, a plan from the International Olympic Committee that aims to change the relationship between the mammoth event and the cities that host it. 

Part of the effort looks to foster sustainable economic growth and development in the places the Games occur. The International Olympics Committee is prioritizing cities that demonstrate they can build infrastructure and facilities that can be used after the sports conclude. 

“Imagine a network of public access to gyms and facilities and recreational opportunities and how that could affect our public health,” Cina said. “When you think about the influx of money, of people coming to use them, that also stimulates the tourist and recreational economy.”

In Cina’s eyes, a Green Mountain State Olympics could be an avenue through which Vermont could spur Act 250 reform, the oft-talked about movement to reshape the state’s marquee land-use law, by taking a hard look at the state’s landscape and building needs. The Olympics could be an opportunity to bring money to the state while serving its residents, he said.

One factor in selecting an Olympics host could be how it helps illustrate the impact of climate change, Cina said. 

Warmer winters in Vermont, for example, could challenge organizers to figure out how to maintain the state’s storied ski slopes for the Games.

That way, international audiences could see the effect of climate change on a region’s environment and economy and learn from its efforts to mitigate those impacts. 

“It’s like building an ark,” Cina said. “It’s an example for the rest of the world too. Like, ‘Okay, this is what this place did. How do we think this way?’”

Vermont has had its fair share of climate-related disasters in recent years. The warming atmosphere has brought about more frequent rain patterns in the state, which are partially to blame for the devastating floods the state sustained the past two years. 

To engage with the International Olympic Committee, Vermont has to form a task force, which H.367 would do. Then, if discussions are successful, the committee pays for a feasibility study at no cost to the state. Pending the results of said study, planning would go forward.

Pablo Bose, a geography professor at the University of Vermont who teaches a class on the Olympics, has some doubts about the idea’s feasibility — but not because of Vermont’s size. 

“It’s not the case that smaller cities haven’t hosted before,” Bose said. “Turin isn’t tiny, but Lake Placid isn’t a huge place either.” 

When it comes to hosting an Olympic Games, Bose said it mostly boils down to having suitable infrastructure. First, there’s infrastructure for events: stadiums, ski slopes and trails for cross-country skiing and biathlons. 

Then there’s infrastructure for hosting, which includes accommodations for athletes, hotels for spectators and reliable transportation to and from the venues. 

For Bose, it’s hard to imagine hosting the Olympics in Vermont due to the sheer amount of infrastructural transformation necessary to put the Games on. That’s not even considering the bid fees, which can range anywhere from $50 million to $100 million alone. 

“It’s really hard for me to see how this would be viable,” he said. 

The Winter Games would be easier, but they pose their own infrastructural snafus, Bose said. Take ice events. 

“In Vancouver, they had separate rinks for speed skating, for ice dancing — it’s not going to cut it if you had a couple of rinks at UVM,” Bose said. “I mean, UVM barely has NCAA-level facilities. How would you upscale that?”

The big question for many host cities is how to use the sports facilities after the Games are over, Bose said. London and Vancouver are the best examples of handling that issue. Officials in both cities planned for their facilities’ post-Olympic use ahead of time.

But Vermont may not be able to attract enough visitors to the area after the Games, Bose said. 

“Even if you made the airport at Burlington an actual international airport, are you going to have that volume of people coming in the rest of the year that would justify that investment?” he asked. 

Transportation and good airlines were the two hallmarks of suitable host regions emphasized by an organizer of Vermont’s closest Olympic comparison. 

Doug Hoffman, corporate controller of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games, said the Adirondacks village was able to keep its budget — a spartan $150 million — much lower than previous Games.

“Our motto was ‘Olympics in perspective,’” Hoffman said. “We geared the Olympics toward the athletes rather than the spectators, and that’s part of the reason that we were able to have a smaller budget than the previous Olympics.”

That model runs contrary to how the Games operate today. Hoffman said the typical budget for an Olympic Games runs into the billions, which he sees as a tall order for Vermont to achieve. 

Even with its abnormally low budget, the Lake Placid Games finished with a $5-6 million budget deficit, though Hoffman puts the onus for the losses on the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games, which cut into ticket sales for the Games in the U.S. later that year. 

But if Lake Placid’s case is any example, Cina may be onto something when it comes to facility use and long-term economic benefit.

“That PR from those Olympics carried us for the next 40 years,” Hoffman said. “So much so that New York State reinvested in all our facilities in the last five years and rebuilt them all because of that consequence, the fact that return on investment was tremendous.”

Lake Placid is also still benefiting from its Olympic-level reputation. In February, the village held the Ski Jumping World Cup using those newly-renovated facilities. 

If Vermont were to go forward with hosting, Hoffman said its best chance would be to host a regional games in concert with neighboring cities. That way, it could take advantage of the existing facilities in Lake Placid just 50 miles or so to the west of Vermont’s largest municipality, Burlington.

Back in Montpelier, Cina’s bill shows no sign of going forward — it’s currently lying dormant in the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. But he’s probing the possibility of attaching the measure to any Act 250 reform bills next year.

But time isn’t a problem. Vermont’s earliest opportunity to host? Only 12 years from now.

(Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.)