I’m not a tennis fan. No offense to anyone who is, it just is not for me. Of course, I like watching golf and cricket, which some would say are even less engaging than tennis. To each his or her own. But even if you find tennis as exciting as a submarine race, there can be no doubt that the Laver Cup tennis tournament in London was, to say the least, interesting on Friday.
According to EuroWeekly, aside from the event being Roger Federer’s last appearance, a climate activist set his arm on fire during a match. In the video below, you can see the man briefly lighting himself and part of the court on fire, before vigorously trying to shake the flames out.
A man has set his arm on fire after invading the court at the Laver Cup on Roger Federer’s last day as a professional tennis player. pic.twitter.com/g0LcBU8PeJ
— Sam Street (@samstreetwrites) September 23, 2022
Oh, well, I guess the idea looked good on paper. It appears that the crowd enjoyed the show, at least, first cheering and then booing as the protestor was wrestled away. It also looks like the man quickly re-thought his protest strategy after realizing that fire is real.
The 20-year-old protestor goes by the name of Kai and is reportedly a member of End UK Private Jets. The group maintains that carbon emissions are the equivalent of genocide. Kai wore a t-shirt that read “End UK Private Jets.”
I may be picking nits here, but doesn’t lighting anything on fire create carbon emissions? Granted, not as much as a private jet, but still, one should not fight carbon with carbon. Just saying.
Related: Pelosi Spent $500000 on Private Jets
In a tweet before the event, Kai announced his plan, noting that people may be disturbed or traumatized by the event. Gauging by the crowd’s reactions, people were more entertained than traumatized. Oddly enough, I think he has a valid point about private jets. I have written before about celebrities with jets of their own lecturing the rest of us about our carbon footprints. But judging by how hard Kai was trying to shake the flames out, it appears that his commitment was not quite as strong as his ambition. Maybe a bit more pre-event planning or research and development was called for. If you can’t take the carbon emissions, get out of the protest.
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