I have a book at home that predicts the future of 'work, rest, and play'. It was published in the year I was born, and it stands for everything I could have had, if the world had played out differently. In it, people play zero-gravity football. I could look through it and feel rather cheated, if the idea of zero-gravity football wasn't so inherently ridiculous. Sadly, sport remains resolutely earthbound. We haven't even got as far as the 'escalator tennis' that Aldous Huxley postulated in Brave New World in 1932.

Given the state of the world and its resources, sport in the future is bound to depend on less technology, not more. Which poses an interesting set of questions. What is the future of sport? How can it be made more sustainable? Which ones will survive the end of cheap energy?

Golf

Las Vegas golf course

One sport in jeopardy is golf, for the sheer wastefulness of it all. A golf course can occupy 150 acres of fine arable land. It's been estimated that 0.6% of the UK is golf courses. That's land, say non-golfers, that could be put to much better use. And then there's the water problem. A golf course can use as much water in a year as a small town. In places where water is scarce, depletion of water tables is a serious problem. And yet, people want to play golf wherever they go. 28 of the 100 biggest water users in Nevada are golf courses. The dry coasts of Spain are dotted with thirsty courses catering to retiring Brits. The desert state of Dubai prides itself on its world class facilities. If water becomes as scarce as some predict, golf courses may be abandoned to the sands again.

There may be hope. Recycling water or growing hardier varieties of grass can help. Layers of synthetic soil substitutes such as Fytofoam can be spread over the courses, holding more water and making better use of rainfall. Sport historian David Goldblatt, in his contribution to the book 'Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?', ponders a bleak future. "In one plausible, if depressing scenario", he writes, "the game will enter its twilight as the strictest reserve of the uber-elite in a water-short, land-ravaged world." Or, perhaps it can translate into its original form, "played on heathland and moorland, and peripheral landscapes."

Winter sports

Another sporting arena in danger is winter sports, the kind that require snow, and for whom global warming spells disaster. According to the WWF, the number of ski stations in the US has fallen from 800 to 500 in 20 years. Snowfall in the Italian alps is down 20% in 30 years (PDF). In one of the nasty catch 22s of climate change, alpine communities are dependent on snow for their tourist industries, but the tourist industry's huge emissions contribute to the melting of the snow.

When nature doesn't provide the snow, the resorts turn on the cannons, and the water and power needs of the artificial snow-making machines feed into the vicious circle. Leo Hickman cites a figure of 13 million cubic metres of water sprayed over French hillsides in the form of snow in 2005, in his book 'The Final Call', with each hectare using 25,000 kilowatts of electricity for the season. In a sign of even greater desperation, some resorts will even fly snow in by helicopter when the rising snow-lines leave a bald patch on a popular piste.

Athletics

Beijing, perhaps not the best place to exert oneself?

There may be more of a future for athletics, although perhaps we'd better not investigate the Olympics too closely. Beijing has made some green concessions, and is fighting air pollution, banning traffic, introducing gas-powered buses and trying to clean up the city. But, it's also diverting huge amounts of water in from the provinces, causing considerable distress to outlying communities. It's building new airport terminals, new highways. For the event itself, thousands of people will fly into China to take part, spectate and report on the games. In total, it could turn up one of the biggest carbon footprints in history.

Aware of the environmental impact of these large events, the PR department for the London 2012 Olympics are working overtime. They announced last October that the Olympic flame would be carbon neutral, to a mixture of praise and derision. You can't fault their enthusiasm -- apparently even the emissions of starting buzzers are being tested -- but the fact is, giant sporting events have a giant environmental cost to match.

People are always going to want to race each other, wrestle, and see who can jump the highest. In the past, we might have been happy knowing who was the fastest in the village. Now we want to know who's the fastest in the world, and that means games on a global scale. Perhaps it's time to reclaim local games. Do you know who the fastest people in your city are?

Soccer

I've admired soccer for a long time, and not just because I'm English. I admire soccer because it's the most user-friendly of sports. It requires nothing more than a ball to play. Goals can be improvised, it can be played almost anywhere, and no further equipment is necessary. In some places I've seen, even the ball is improvised, made of tightly wrapped twine and shredded plastic bags. Being such a simple game, soccer should be one of the most environmentally friendly, but just like athletics, its problems are all about scale.

David Beckham Biggest carbon footprint in history?

A breakdown of last year's FA cup final found that it had a carbon footprint 3,000 times the size of the pitch it was played on. 47% of the 73,000 supporters travelled by car, at an average of 367 miles each. In the course of the match, fans consumed over 12,000 burgers, and over 300,000 pints of beer, just within the Millennium Stadium. The clean-up operation picked up 37 tons of glass, 8 tons of paper, and 11 tons of uneaten food, and nothing was recycled. On the individual level, the Carbon Trust estimates that with the cars, houses, and international jet-setting, David Beckham may have the biggest carbon footprint in human history.

There are some people tackling the problem. Ipswich Town declared themselves the first carbon neutral football team last year. The Carbon Footyprint website may be sponsored by a power company, but it is doing some good work encouraging fans to car share, and runs a league of the greenest teams.

Motorsport

I've saved the most obvious casualty for last -- motorsport. In a world of dwindling oil supplies, Nascar or Formula One enthusiasts are going to have to come to terms with some hard truths. The sport in all its fuel and testosterone glory is not going to survive, not with cars that get 2 miles to the gallon on a good day. David Goldblatt predicts the end: "Motor racing was the sport of the futurists when the future looked rather more promising than it does currently. Today it looks closer to the sport of lemmings."

It may not all be over yet though. While acknowledging that "talking about climate change at a Formula One race might at first glance seem like praising celibacy in a brothel", Reuters reported some positive news last year -- the organizers want to make the sport not just carbon neutral, but use it as a force for change. With 600 million viewers worldwide, many of them the most die-hard motorists on the planet, a sport they connect with may be the only way to get through to them. Formula One plans to try out some new rules from 2011. Possible regulations include a mandatory switch to biofuels, limits to engine sizes, and devices that store the energy from braking. Best of all, Formula One has always brought the best innovations out of car manufacturer's R and D departments, and technologies pioneered and popularised on the racetrack could filter through into the mainstream too. "Formula One does not have to be on the defensive," says BMW's Mario Thiessen. "It's on our agenda to take developments in Formula One and use them for road cars."

Indy cars already run on ethanol, and while that's not a genuinely sustainable solution in the long term, at least it shows a willingness to think beyond fossil fuels. Nascar lags behind, finally banning leaded fuel last year, a full decade after the rest of the world. So, perhaps they're headed in the right direction?

In conclusion, despite Neil Ardleys' dreams of zero gravity football, the future of sport has to lie in smaller scale, lower technology forms. Rediscovering local events, or participating rather than spectating, could begin to rein in some of the global showcase events. We can seek out sport that reconnects us to the earth and costs it little, like hiking or sailing. And fans shouldn't be too alarmed. Because sport is ultimately as much about fun and community as it is about spectacle, it's not going to vanish altogether. In fact, says David Goldblatt, "there will be more rather than less sport... Given that we are all going to be cutting down on our consumption and production, and let us hope our levels of administration, what do you plan to be doing?"