Abstract
As global climate injustices worsen, sport has the potential to spur climate action through various connections (e.g., athletes to fans, sports teams to sponsors). However, sport's entanglement with capitalism and colonialism is often ignored. In this article, the authors conducted a critical discourse analysis of 20 episodes from four podcast channels on sport and sustainability. The results show how discourses around “sport as an influencer of climate action” create different understandings and implications of leadership. Some versions of leadership include discourses of upward progress, carbon offsetting, and fighting capitalism with more capitalism. Others involve discourses of contextual degrowth, unlearning dominant worldviews, and supporting grassroots activism. Although these discourses are layered and complex, it is important for sport stakeholders to learn from this dialogue, unsettle their own colonial practices, and pay closer attention to the discourses that constrain what is thinkable, sayable, or desirable when it comes to sport and justice.
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