sports

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 […]

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 […]

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.

Gray skies loom over Beijing as Chinese officials announce emergency air-pollution measures

A 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:

Meet the eco-activist athletes who’ll be competing in Beijing

Photo: Mansoor Ahmed/WireImage LeBron James, U.S., Basketball The Cavaliers’ superstar forward LeBron James not only passed Olympic muster this year, but also met SpongeBob SquarePants’ approval. The two celebs have teamed up as part of Nickelodeon’s Big Green Help campaign aimed at encouraging kids to go green.

MLB, NRDC, and Chevy partner for ‘greenest’ All-Star Game

Tonight's Major League Baseball All-Star Game in New York should be the "greenest" MLB event ever, according to Reuters. In partnership with Chevy and NRDC, MLB incorporated a number of "green" initiatives into tonight's game: Athletes will be transported to and from Yankee Stadium in FlexFuel Chevy Silverados, post-consumer recycled waste content and bio-based materials will be included in paper products, and NRDC green teams will roam the stands of Yankee Stadium encouraging debauched and inebriated baseball fans to recycle.

However, the centerpiece of the green All-Star Game is the giant "green" red carpet upon which the all-star players paraded for 18 blocks down Sixth Avenue. The 95,000-square-foot carpet, created by Bentley Prince Street, Inc. of California, was made completely out of recycled fiber content, and 100 percent of electricity was generated by an on-site solar array or financed through the purchase of Green-e certified renewable energy certificates.

Too bad the FlexFuel Chevy Silverados in which the All-Stars paraded were less green than the carpet upon which they rolled.

Fox will broadcast the final Yankee Stadium All-Star Game starting at 7:00 p.m. ET.

A semi-comprehensive sportin’ round-up

Beijing Olympics 2008: With less than 30 days to the Olympic games, Chinese officials and businesses have actively been touting efforts to reduce air pollution. Even as visibility was down to a few hundred meters in the pollution-laden misty July weather, Beijing's environmental bureau insisted that there will be clear skies for the August games.

Chinese corporations are trying to do their part to curb the smog. The Beijing Shougang Group has cut steel production by 70 percent and will take a 2 million yuan loss for the third quarter. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge told the AP, "We are confident that atmospheric pollution will have no major impact on the Olympic Games."

However, Olympic athletes are not quite as confident as Rogge in the Beijing climate. In the lead-up to the games, the Canadian Olympic Road Racing Team will train in Kyoto, Japan, thereby avoiding the streets of Beijing until the last possible second.

Perhaps the Canadians are right to raise a skeptical eyebrow at Rogge's claims. As of early July, Beijing's smog was five times over the safety limit and a few recent health studies have indicated that polluted air may affect blood circulation and athletic performance for asthmatics and non-asthmatics alike.

A locust swarm worries Chinese officials ahead of Olympics

Officials in the Northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia have mobilized 33,000 people to stop a swarm of locusts 267 miles outside of Beijing. Concerned that the locust swarm may descend on Beijing during the Olympic Games, the regional government has set aside 4 million yuan for pesticides and large-scale spraying machinery. As of July 2, the swarm had infested 5,000 square miles.

"The larvae are in the hatching stage in the counties and cities near Beijing, Gao Wenyuan, of the Inner Mongolia's grassland office, told the Xinhua news agency, as reported by Bloomberg. "The plague is becoming more apparent."

Olympic sailing venue battles with massive algae bloom

With a mere 37 days until the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Qingdao, the port city where Olympic sailing events will be held, has sailed into troubled waters. Since June 12, municipal and Olympic officials have been wrestling with an algae bloom in Fushan Bay that has produced over 20,000 metric tons of weeds and green muck. Approximately 10,000 troops and Qingdao residents and 1,000 boats have been dispatched to dredge the bay.

According to a Reuters report, algae blooms are regular occurrences in Qingdao, but this one stands out: