Lean and Green

I noticed something the other day when I was working on an assignment for my event management class. Our assignment was to look at the bid London made for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games and compare it with the bids of other cities and come up with reasons why London got the games instead of other cities like Paris, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro.

What I noticed (at least between the bids of the top two cities considered, London and Paris) was that there was a lot of attention paid in both of those bids to the games being carbon-neutral, environmentally minimal, however you want to say it. This makes perfect sense to me because the environmentalist movement seems like something that you think would go hand in hand with the Olympism movement.

And then there's China.

My feelings about other reasons China shouldn't have been awarded the games I feel are well documented (in fact just scroll down), but while those were political reasons I think that these are ideological differences between the Olympics and Western nations and those of China. A few months ago, there was a report that Justine Henin won't be competing in the Olympics to defend her gold medal because of the poor air quality. Other athletes, as well as teams, have come out saying that they will be wearing breathing masks when they're outside but not competing. This city poses a health risk for everyone, athletes and spectators alike. China has already come out and said that they have to shut down factories in the Beijing area a week in advance just so you can see the city through the muck.

After all, would you rather spend two weeks in this:



Or this:




Lak