Olympics
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Athletes play down pollution concerns, Beijing gives in to weather
Not so bad. That’s what Olympic Canadian cyclist Svein Tuft thought of the air quality when he raced on Saturday, Aug. 9 (Air Pollution Index: 78) for six and a half hours outside of Beijing. As The New York Times reported, Tuft made short shrift of the pollution fears: The pollution concerns, he decided, “have […]
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Yao Ming to serve as UNEP ‘environmental champion’
Yao Ming, Chinese basketball player extraordinaire and eco-activist green Olympian, recently agreed to be the United Nations Environmental Program’s first-ever “Environmental Champion.” Yao accepted the UNEP’s invitation the day after the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. Said Yao, “In my role as ‘Environmental Champion,’ I will work with governments, the private sector, and the public […]
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Obama clean-energy ad will air during Olympics coverage
Thought the Olympics might bring some reprieve from election season? Think again. Today Barack Obama rolled out his $5 million ad campaign that will run during Olympic coverage on NBC, focusing on a clean energy economy. “The hands that built this nation can build a new economy,” says the ad, as it shows images of […]
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Smog settles on Beijing for opening ceremony
Friday: On the day of the Olympic opening ceremonies, the Air Pollution Index reading was a moderate 94 (see the “Beijing Air Quality” box on the right side of this page): View of Beijing’s third ring road and CCTV building. Photo taken Aug. 8. And here’s the same view one week earlier, when the API […]
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Athletes forgo masks; Beijing skies gray on Olympics eve
Athletes, journalists, and world dignitaries were greeted with a thick white haze yesterday and today as they descended upon Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games. Much to the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s chagrin, the weather has not delivered the "clear and blue" skies as promised when Beijing was awarded the games. However, as […]
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IOC and multi-nationals complicit in subjecting world class athletes to world class pollution
You can’t criticize awarding the Olympic Games to China just because their rapacious coal-building policy has now made them the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. By that standard, America should never have been awarded the games. But awarding the games to a city that is one of the most polluted in the world […]
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Beijing skies vary days before Olympics
Monday: Taken from a Beijing apartment on Aug. 4:
Tuesday: Proving that the weather and pollution levels are completely unpredictable, the weather of Aug. 5 was sunny and clear:
A silver lining to all this pollution pandemonium? After the Olympic games China will start to monitor two pollutants not currently figured into the Air Pollution Index: ozone and small particulate matter PM2.5.
And James Fallows of the Atlantic reports that at least one of the new four subway lines in Beijing works smoothly.
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Gray skies loom over Beijing as Chinese officials announce emergency air-pollution measures
Photo: meloshA haze descended on Beijing for four consecutive days earlier this week and made a fitting backdrop for state environmental regulators to announce emergency measures that they'll put in place if air pollution remains a problem. More power plants and manufacturing facilities could be shut down, and more cars pulled from the roads, according to a news release from the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
This second wave of shut-downs would affect small solvent factories that had previously been overlooked because of their relatively low pollutant emissions as compared to iron factories or coal plants. As The New York Times reports: