Trump, FIFA, and the World Cup 2026: A match made in climate hell

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Future universal historians will look upon the first month of 2025 as an inflexion point in the rapid descent toward the uninhabitability of our planet. With little fanfare or media attention, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that in 2024, for the first time in recorded history, we had heated the planet beyond the 1.5 degree Celsius red line target of the Paris Agreement, a tipping point scientists have long warned could trigger ecological feedback loops that imperil human civilization, and push us toward a sixth mass extinction.

The United States, among the major drivers and prime beneficiaries of this catastrophe as the world’s largest producer of both oil and gas, saw the swearing-in of Donald Trump, who describes the climate emergency as a “giant hoax” and a “scam.”

Reelected with the enthusiastic support of the fossil fuel industry, which contributed 455 million US dollars to Republican campaigns (Trump had previously directly asked them to donate 1 billion US dollars to his reelection bid), this investment immediately paid dividends. 

On his first day in office, he signed a flurry of executive orders that announced the United States’ intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, cancelled a host of his predecessor’s renewable energy initiatives, and declared a National Energy Emergency designed to allow the dirty energy industry to “drill, baby, drill” without any constraint or consideration of the consequences. 

The country that was at that very moment producing more oil and gas than any other nation in human history, and which already has among the lowest fuel prices in the Western world, was announcing its intent to escalate its war on our planet’s climate. 

Not satisfied with opening up all of his own vast country to ecocidal energy production, the new president was also demonstrating bellicose expansionist tendencies against sovereign fossil fuel and mineral-rich nations, warning of severe fiscal and/or military consequences if Canada and Greenland did not agree to join the United States. 

Sensing the dawn of a lucrative new era of unregulated fossil fuel use, the six largest US banks withdrew from the UN’s Net-Zero Banking Alliance, effectively abandoning their previous climate commitments. 

At precisely the moment that the planet surpassed the 1.5 degree Rubicon and was as hot as it had ever been in human history, the United States’ government, financial system, energy sector, as well as the tech titans responsible for the creation of a disinformation ecosystem that has enabled planetary heating, were assembled on stage to celebrate their right to double down on profiteering from plunging the planet into ecological chaos.

Meanwhile, the costliest climate-fueled fires in US history (an estimated 250 billion US dollars worth of homes destroyed) continued to burn into their second week with no end in sight. It hadn’t rained in Los Angeles for almost eight months.

Infantino's bromance with Trump on public display

As FIFA prepares for the 2026 World Cup to be hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, what does it think of this deranged and bewildering convergence of morbid political symptoms? 

Well, as US president Trump was declaring war on the planet’s atmosphere (as well as on immigrants, transgender people, etc.), a beaming FIFA president Gianni Infantino was seated a few meters away from him on the dais of the Capitol building, a bona fide VVIP at his inauguration, comfortably surrounded by 1.35 trillion US dollars of wealth.

Sitting between the row of uneasy former presidents and a marble statue of Abraham Lincoln, and alongside such dim luminaries as UFC CEO Dana White, FOX News founder Rupert Murdoch, and Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei, Infantino could be seen breaking into nervous laughter along with Hilary Clinton, hand on forehead, at the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America.”  

The recent escalation of Infantino’s bromance with Trump has been jarring even by FIFA’s clientelist standards and raises an array of unsettling questions. 

His appearance onstage among the most powerful drivers of Trump’s platform at the inauguration was the culmination of a frenzy of recent social media posts by Infantino expressing his admiration and support of the new president, singing his praises at Trump rallies, at Mar-a-Lago, in the White House, at Davos, and so forth.

In a post on Instagram, FIFA president Gianni Infantino celebrated his recent visit to Trump's home in Florida ahead of Trump's inauguration.

In another recent Oval Office meeting between the two presidents, Trump announced the creation of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026, which unsurprisingly places him squarely in charge of overseeing the tournament, and somewhat alarmingly houses the task force in the Department of Homeland Security, run by climate change denier Kristi Noem.

Infantino celebrated the MAGA program, gushing “I would like to thank President Trump, with whom I have a great friendship, and to assure him that, together, we will make not only America great again, but also the entire world, of course, because football - or soccer - unites the world.”

Trump's term will be a disaster for the climate

In light of the US-hosted FIFA Club World Cup this summer and the cohosted World Cup in 2026, the ramifications of this political relationship for global sport are complex, far-ranging and raise many questions. 

Are the values of FIFA aligned with those of MAGA? Does Trump’s erasure of trans people, assault on immigrant communities, and threatened ethnic cleansing of Gaza align with FIFA’s human rights commitments? How do his startling attempts to subvert international sovereignty square with an organisation oriented around and ostensibly led by footballing nation-states?

In terms of climate, how can a sporting organisation committed to raising awareness of the severity of the climate crisis align itself with a nation that just mandated that all reference to it be scrubbed from government websites, as Trump did within two weeks of taking office? 

They are all important and murky questions, but there is a way to think about these issues that traverses these Gordian knots.

The challenges posed by moral relativism and human rights whataboutery that have coloured recent debates about the suitability of FIFA’s host nations - primarily Russia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia - do not apply to the geophysical realities of the climate emergency. 

It doesn’t matter if one admires or abhors Trump’s policies if one focuses only on their carbon impacts, and in that sole regard, his impact will be catastrophic. Trump’s term will be a disaster for the climate, and even though the US is only one country, it is a disproportionately influential and exceptional(ist) one, and the direct and indirect impacts of this will be vast and enduring. 

Whether or not this will render the US as a global pariah in a rapidly heating world remains to be seen—it certainly should—but it ought to put them sharply at odds with FIFA, which has spent a great deal of time and energy over the past decade talking about the importance of their climate commitments. 

FIFA requires host countries to have a plan to reduce emissions

The united bid by Canada, Mexico and the US to host the World Cup in 2026 was submitted to FIFA on March 16, 2018, a year and a half prior to Trump’s previous declaration of intent to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement which was hastily reversed by President Biden on his first day in office.  

The bid book outlines at great length (530 pages, plus various appendices) that the three would-be host countries meet FIFA’s exhaustive requirements. The bid book also went into some detail explaining that Donald Trump was unlikely to have a negative impact on the hosting of the tournament in 2026:

“The political climate in the United States remains particularly polarized following a contentious election in 2016….President Donald J. Trump’s job approval currently registers at low levels in some surveys, but he enjoys significant support from his base. Due to term limits, he will not be eligible to be President in 2026…Though the image of the United States abroad may have suffered in some places, the United States is still viewed in positive terms by the majority of the world.” (italics added)

Setting aside a false assurance of a tournament not presided over by Trump, the consequences of this historical miscalculation have serious footballing implications.

While the majority of FIFA’s sustainability commitments are characterised primarily by a distinct lack of commitment, those mandated in current World Cup hosting requirements are not.

Requirement 2.8.1 demands that hosting associations “[s]how leadership in climate action, including using best efforts to engage in the process of becoming a signatory of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Sports for Climate Action Framework within a reasonable timeframe and as agreed with FIFA.”

More sharply, requirement 2.8.2, insists that the host country or host city authority “[h]ave a plan of action to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and/or their country’s climate action plans.” 

Since its declaration of intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, this is patently no longer true of the USA, which, in concert with the slate of other energy-related measures implemented by Trump, clarifies that they intend to have no climate plan at all, and now join Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the planet’s fourth non-signatory country.

Depressingly, Canada may be following a similar course. With an election imminent, the narrow favourite to replace interim Prime Minister Mark Carney is Conservative Pierre Poilievre, a Canadian version of Trump in many ways, and someone driven by a shared animosity to energy regulation of every type, which has been the defining feature of his campaign to date.

Like its southern neighbour, Canada is extracting more oil and gas than at any other time in its history, and is currently the world’s 5th largest oil producer, sending 4.3 million barrels a day to the US alone, and notably a producer of the dirtiest and most energy intensive oil in the world.

Canadians also have the distinction of being among the very few non-Middle-Eastern nations with a higher per capita carbon footprint than Americans. And yet advocating for sharply increased energy production and consumption is at the centre of Poilievre’s campaign.

His political mantra has been “Axe the [carbon] Tax,” and he recently assured a rally in Alberta that "[w]e're going to clear the way for pipelines. I am going to support pipelines south, north, east, west. We will build Canadian pipelines." 

Sadly, an unrestrained love of fossil fuel profits is perhaps the only remaining unifying strand between the two countries, who are currently embroiled in a ruinous tariff war initiated by Trump, who has of late repeatedly stated his desire to annex Canada and make it “the 51st state.” 

He has also slapped cohosts Mexico with identical (25%) economically brutal levies, in addition to more general threats made to Denmark, Panama, Columbia, the EU, the BRICS countries, and the entire world.

Both Canada and Mexico have imposed retaliatory tariffs, so North America now faces the circular firing squad of a trade war. The United bid has never looked less united, in contrast to the many warm declarations of good neighbourliness that underscored the proposal, submitted during a less continentally contentious era.

FIFA seems unconcerned with these growing divisions so far, responding:

"Since the bidding process began for the FIFA World Cup 2026, the governments and associations of Canada, Mexico and the United States have been extremely supportive in their eagerness to host the tournament.” 

Trump told reporters that this acrimony would add a productive frisson to the event, claiming “I think it’s going to make it more exciting … Tension’s a good thing.”

21st-century World Cup hosts are all drivers of the climate emergency

The United World Cup was already a major ecological problem prior to Trump’s reelection. Particularly since the election of Infantino in 2016, FIFA has spoken more and more about the climate crisis while simultaneously creating megaevents seemingly engineered to exacerbate it. 

Overwhelmingly, the two major sources of emissions from megaevents are transportation and construction. Since 2016, each host has been one requiring either massive construction projects (Qatar, Saudi Arabia) or travel across huge distances (Russia, North America, the 2030 tricontinental bid).

As part of a wider takeover of the sport by energy interests as sponsors and owners for greenwashing purposes, it is also the case that the post-Paris hosts are almost exclusively petrostates, including the world’s four largest oil producers - the USA, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Canada currently produce half of the world’s oil, and are among its ten largest consumers.

These nations join Qatar as all featuring in the top ten gas producers, including three of the top four, and are half of the top ten heaviest consumers.

Remarkably, all but one of the nine first 21st-century World Cups will be hosted by a country in the top 15 per capita carbon emitters, suggesting that awarding hosting rights to the world’s worst drivers of the climate emergency is a feature, rather than a bug of the process.

If FIFA’s perverse and ecocidal goal were to ensure the maximum possible GHG emissions of its flagship event, then it would have adopted the following policies

• allow unregulated investment into the game by the world’s worst polluting states and corporations
• award hosting rights only to the most environmentally irresponsible nations
• give priority to those with either inadequate infrastructure or with host cities spread as far apart as possible
• increase the size of the tournament from its historical norm of 16-24 teams to 48 so as to attract a record 5 million fans and six billion viewers to watch a record 104 matches 

Remarkably, this is precisely what they did while purporting to minimise their carbon footprint in various ways and evincing deep concern about the climate crisis.

FIFA has a track record of underestimating emissions

According to FIFA's climate strategy, football has the power to radically shift mindsets on climate change and mainstream climate action: 

"We have a huge, attentive audience and it is our duty to amplify these key messages. We will help educate fans on climate change and encourage them to play their part in protecting the planet and the beautiful game. We have a moral, urgent duty to accelerate our action. Our commitment to protecting our climate remains unwavering,” the climate strategy reads.

To say the least, the commitment is wavering. The largest World Cup hosted over the largest geographic area was always going to be a carbon bomb, one utterly incompatible with net-zero targets.

Tellingly, the climate impacts of the tournament are addressed in the very final section of the bid book, when less patient readers might have given up:

“The United Bid understands and does not underestimate the impact of hundreds of thousands of fans and other visitors resulting from the staging of a FIFA World Cup™… The United Bid’s preliminary estimate for the Competition’s carbon footprint, based on recognized calculation protocols and boundaries, is 3.6 million metric tons,” the section reads.

This is a massive underestimate. FIFA and its hosts have a track record of undercounting their emissions. They were found by advertising regulator the Swiss Fairness Commission (SLK) to have misled fans about Qatar 2022 being carbon neutral. 

The SLK adjudicated that "Fifa was not able to provide proof that the claims were accurate during the proceedings," and added that "the SLK has advised Fifa to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims in the future.”

Their dodgy accounting of greenhouse gases (GHG) also fails to include directly related emissions such as the impact of billions of people streaming games and other World Cup content to cellphones and flat-screen TVs, as well as the footprint of the mountains of apparel and paraphernalia created for the tournament. 

It also omits the impact of hundreds of thousands of private jet flights that are likely to accompany the spectacle. As FIFA requires that 8% of each stadium's seats be set aside for corporate hospitality, along with 700-2000 for VIPs and 75-300 for VVIPs, it is safe to assume that many of these high rollers will not be flying commercially. 

FIFA also excludes the massive emissions associated with the almost one thousand qualifying games for the tournament involving 206 teams with an expected attendance of around 20 million and several billion viewers.

But let’s pretend for a moment that the estimated footprint is correct. This means that a single sporting event is already more impactful than the annual total emissions of the 50 least polluting nations, several of which have populations in the tens of millions. 

If we factor in that the tournament lasts only a little over a month, its impacts are more in line with the total monthly emissions of all 5.5 million Norwegians, 61st in the global rankings, and still worse than the entire monthly activity of 145 other entire nations. 

If this seems too mathematically abstract, consider this: the release of 3.6 million tons of GHG will kill 3600 people, a grim formula outlined by Richard Parncutt in "The Human Cost of Anthropogenic Global Warming: Semi-Quantitative Prediction and the 1,000-Tonne Rule”.

This is the likeliest scenario, with the best case scenario being 1,200 casualties, and the worst being 10,800 deaths, given that these are luxury emissions that are easily avoidable and mainly driven by the global elite, is this a price humanity is willing to pay for a newly bloated North American World Cup? 

FIFA's claims of offsets are wildly inaccurate

The preferred greenwashing device of 21st-century neoliberal organisations who find themselves in this ethical and reputational quagmire is invariably one thing: offsets.

FIFA’s reliance on offsetting is an understandably popular form of magical thinking which Andrea Malm and Wim Catron have identified as a key tactic of the era they call the “overshoot conjecture,” but it is widely discredited by experts as a serious emissions reduction strategy. 

David Goldblatt, who has produced excellent analyses on football’s climate impacts, has deemed FIFA’s claims about offsets "completely and utterly unreliable," suggesting that they seem to offer a "get out of jail free card" on pollution while enabling devastating business as usual.

Carbon Market Watch has also examined the gap between the organisation’s claims and the reality regarding the efficacy of its offset schemes, and has sharply criticised “FIFA’s foul, irresponsible, farcical, and absurd approach to the climate.” 

Offsetting claims about previous World Cups have been shown to be wildly inaccurate. Suffice it to say, the carbon impact of this tournament cannot be offset and attempts to claim that this is the case should not be taken seriously.

FIFA’s response to my questions about the tournament's emissions was that “FIFA will communicate about its assessments and plans for the FIFA World Cup 2026 in connection with climate in due course,” which at least demonstrates that this is a concern they will need to take seriously. 

It remains to be seen if their response will be more meaningful than has previously been the case. The fact that the most recent FIFA council meeting discussed potentially expanding the 2030 tournament to include a farcical 64 teams does not bode well.

Plans for the 2026 World Cup must be changed

So what is to be done? Since the tournament was announced in 2018, the world has changed and plans for the World Cup must too. 

In contrast to the assurances in the United bid book, it is patently no longer the case that “[t]he United States remains committed to being a leader in environmental protection.” 

On the contrary, the decision to exit the Paris Agreement in tandem with the host of other ecologically disastrous policies implemented in the first few weeks of the Trump presidency must surely disqualify the USA as host. 

Infantino has positioned himself as a champion of the climate, and in a speech published on FIFA's website, he celebrates that since he was elected president in 2016, FIFA became the first international sports organisation to join the UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now campaign, pledging to measure, reduce, and compensate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the FIFA World Cups.

“I am proud to announce today that − based on our long experience with climate action in football − FIFA has developed a comprehensive strategy and is committed to investing substantial resources that will allow FIFA and football to reach the ambitious and necessary objectives of the UNFCCC Sports for Climate Action Framework,” he continued.

If any of this is true, he is obligated to act accordingly.

I have argued elsewhere that only a commitment to degrowth can meaningfully affect the football industry’s woeful carbon footprint and restore some sanity to the global game, and this is truer now than ever. 

It is also true that no nation whose commitment to domestic profit-seeking at the expense of the rest of the world is so absolute that it cannot abide even the baggy strictures of the famously forgiving Paris Agreement is a morally justifiable host in a post-1.5 degree world. This vague but significant commitment must surely be the absolute minimal environmental criteria given the existential stakes. 

The United States are an environmental rogue state now and should be treated accordingly: the leader who chose the path of climate nihilism cannot be allowed to preside over the World Cup.

If the USA wants to deny geophysical reality and existentially threaten our shared planet, that is their prerogative. But while this is the case then they can no longer host international football tournaments.

Cut down on participating teams and move the tournament

The easiest short-term solution is to cancel the recently invented and utterly irrelevant 32-team Club World Cup and return the World Cup finals to 24 or, ideally, 16 teams and host in Mexico and Canada.

Mexico hosted a wonderful tournament in 1986 and have recently elected Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate campaigner and IPCC lead author, as president, suggesting a majoritarian care for the future of the planet among their population that is depressingly absent among their fellow North Americans. 

There is ample historical precedent for such moves. Over the years, FIFA has banned many nations from participating in their competitions for a variety of righteous political reasons, including apartheid-era South Africa and, more recently, Russia, following their invasion of Ukraine. 

They have also reassigned hosting rights to a World Cup on short notice, as was the case when the USA took over as hosts of the 2003 Women’s World Cup due to a SARS outbreak in China, or when Columbia’s hosting rights to the 1986 tournament were transferred to Mexico.

FIFA hosting requirements authorise such a move:

“[i]n the event that a bid is unable to demonstrate that it can meet any of these requirements, FIFA is entitled, and reserves the right, to determine that such bid has materially failed to meet the minimum requirements to host the Competition and that such bid is not eligible for consideration….These requirements also form an integral part of the legal framework for the hosting of the Competition and are fully binding obligations, with the consequence that any material breach could give grounds for the right of termination of hosting rights.” 

FIFA clearly has the power to revoke the USA’s hosting rights, and their climate policies suggest they should. 

However, they are seemingly in the process of transitioning away from decades of old-fashioned corruption under the tenures of Havelange and Blatter to a novel and still developing form of utter entanglement with, and subordination to, fossil fuel sportswashing interests under Infantino. While financially beneficial in the short term, this path aligns the beautiful game with a futureless death cult, one that is sharply at odds with football’s values.

Trump’s exit from Paris is a rare opportunity for FIFA to take a clear and impactful stand that is actually in line with its principles and begin the work of restoring its toxic reputation. 

The challenges I raise here are on their radar, and their spokesperson assures me that “FIFA is looking forward to further discussions on all key matters relating to the organisation of the FIFA World Cup 2026 as we aim to continue the excellent working relationship with the governments, associations and local organisers in all three host countries and unite the world through football.” 

It is time for football’s governing body to live up to its motto and act heroically “For the Game. For the World.” 

In the midst of a climate emergency when the scientific community is pleading with the world to rapidly decarbonise, choosing to host a tournament of this needlessly bloated magnitude is a moral catastrophe. But choosing to do so in a nation that has just signalled its intent to exit the Paris Agreement and entirely abandon its responsibilities to the rest of humanity is obscene and must not be allowed. 

It provides moral license and the imprimatur of international legitimacy to the most perverse and reckless polluting behaviours—activities that imperil both the future of the World Cup, and of the world that watches it too.