Bayern Munich fined €75k over two incidents from August 27th Gladbach game

Alright, here's a weird one. Bayern Munich have collected a fine of €75,000 from the German footballing association, the DFB, for two separate instances from their August 27 match against Gladbach, which ended in a 1-1 draw. The first was for the incident of a pitch invader who attempted to tie himself to the goalpost — disrupting a high-profile spectacle of industry in the name of climate activism. The second was the use of flares.

The first incident was perhaps most memorable for this image of Thomas Müller trying to deal with the disruption:

Ironically, flares are bad for the environment, or at least the local air quality — on top of being dangerous; they’re banned for a reason!

It probably is a little silly that we blithely insist on normalcy even as the world treats serious emerging challenges with a scant fraction of the urgency that is required. Of course, we can’t expect everything to stop (and certainly not the DFB to rubber stamp such efforts with their approval) — but on the other hand, a baseline level of everyone being content and not marching in the streets over this creates the political circumstances that don’t compel nations to tackle the issue with everything they’ve got, right?

As for how those efforts are going, you can read more about the latest round of the UN climate change conference here. In summary, reasons for optimism and room for improvement.

So that’s that! Hopefully a little win for everyone: token restitution from the club, whose season has continued uninterrupted, and a reminder to the fans to leave the fireworks to the actual players (and metaphorically). And everyone reads a little bit more about climate change.