The Not-So-Green Olympics
China says their Olympics will be the "Green Games." Not exactly.
China is trying to do all it can to promote itself as a “green” country in order to win friends and influence commerce as they host this round of the Olympics in Beijing. They are going to all kinds of measures to make the Olympics and their country look like they care about the athletes and the environment. Thus, they are promoting a “Green Games” theme for the Olympics.
But, all that is green isn’t necessarily “green.” Take a look at this photo of a bay in eastern China. You can view the rest of the linked slideshow to see the extent of their problem. The report reads:
Chinese fishermen pitch in to help clean up the coast of Qingdao, east China’s Shandong province, about 550 kms (340 miles) southeast of Beijing on July 1, 2008. China scrambled Thursday to clear tonnes of algae that is covering a third of the Olympic sailing course and causing huge embarrassment for authorities trying to promote a “Green Games.”
It’s far-fetched to actually believe these fishermen are “pitching in.” Can one really think working-class fishermen from China would stop fishing for food and money to clean up slimy blue-green algae in order to just “pitch in”? The government of China has actually mobilized tens of thousands of people. Many of these people are being forced to work. Ah, the joys of living in a communist regime.
Also, the caption makes it sound like it was being cleaned up on that Thursday, July 3. Actually, the authorities don’t even know if the area will be cleaned up by August. However, this current problem has been growing since late May. Meanwhile, sailing teams have to train in the area.
While media reports try to make the enormity of this problem seem small by saying that only one-third of the training area has been inundated, the actual scale of their problem is much more vast. Xinhua, the official news reporting agency of China, has the affected area encompassing over 5,000 square miles! Basically, this is not new for them. That region of China has long suffered from these algal blooms.
As their population and the need for water management has grown, the actual use of technology to manage their water releases has not kept up. In July 2007, a lake in the northeastern city of Changchun (just to the northeast and across the Gulf of Chihli) left 25,000 without water and struggling to find bottled water. In October 2007, another lake to the south of Qingdao suffered a massive algal outbreak that had a major economic impact on the lake’s fish population. And before that, in May 2007, China had to divert water from the Yangtze River into the Taihu Lake (north of Singapore). Over two million people get their water from Lake Taihu.
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Dee McClanahan is a fishery biologist and systems administrator from Oklahoma. He co-blogs at Snapped Shot.
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9 Comments
1. Suzanne Pomeranz:It’s, of course, way past time to cancel these Olympic Games and let China know that it was a HUGE mistake to even give it the possibility of hosting them. From human rights abuses which continue in the shadows of preparations to bad water to the earthquake(s) - which need the Chinese government attention much more than the Olympic games - to quick & possibly poor construction, etc. etc. etc. - China is NOT the right place for these games or any other such world event.
suzanne
Jul 21, 2008 - 3:47 am 2. CaptDMO:Trying to appear “green”? I think not.
I suspect that hoards of international athletes
crumbling to the ground as their bodies revolt
from lack of oxygen as they try to compete at their highest level is to be avoided.
I predict that the cold smoke stacks, restricted auto traffic, additional buses (from where?) at discounted rates, and currently locked-out factory worker event supernumeraries will all vaporize as fast as dukats, and closeting services, for the homeless after the Democratic Convention in Colorado, when all the private jets and “news” trucks move on to greener pastures.
Jul 21, 2008 - 7:08 am 3. Boris:I could be wrong.
“But how many times, over and over, are we finding that these stupid, idiotic, painful, and expensive ideas that the greenie (greedy) environmentalists concoct and force us into actually do more harm to the environment than help it??”
It wouldn’t be pajamas media without an uniformed shot at environmentalism.
Jul 21, 2008 - 8:10 am 4. kabud:Suzanne Pomeranz:
west is scared, you and readers here may be not informed but believe me THE RULERS of this country knows but are hiding the truth from us:
Asian communism has no remorse to kill all of us
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/5-8-8/31055.html
Jul 21, 2008 - 9:10 am 5. Bruce Padgett:We’re taking the Olympic “party” to a country who still uses imprisonment and firing squads for dissenters, has no regard for the world’s future except for lining their pockets, and sucks the oil out of Africa while watching the locals butcher each other.
Jul 21, 2008 - 12:29 pm 6. pch1013:So, do we patronize this farce by attending with Mr. Bush?
“It wouldn’t be pajamas media without an uniformed shot at environmentalism.”
Or an anti-Muslim diatribe. I can’t believe Roger actually green-lighted this piece (pun intended); Dee missed a golden opportunity to equate the green of noxious algae with the green of radical Islam.
Jul 21, 2008 - 12:48 pm 7. Zach:To answer the last question (and of the top of my head): banning DDT, smog-reducing summer blend gasoline in California that contaminates groundwater, banning forest management that allows for major wildfires rather than small controlled fires and cutting, mandating corn ethanol that encourages more land to be converted to agricultural land, etc, etc.
Jul 22, 2008 - 3:36 pm 8. Hell_Is_Like_Newark:Environmentalists don’t seem to understand the law of unintended consequences.
My wife’s company imports garments from China. Production has come to a halt due to the lack of electricity (all those coal burning plants being turned off). Production is now being shifted to Indonesia, India, Vietnam. Not sure if China will get the business back. Meanwhile, a lot of Chinese are out of work. I wonder how much the average Chinese citizen is paying to host this event?
Jul 24, 2008 - 4:26 pm 9. Bruce Padgett:China’a Billionaires which for the most part are like the other Billionaires around the world should get together for a summit and actually change the “party”, and the New World Order “Bush/Cheny” Cheny’s been there since Nixon. As this planet get’s hotter we have the technology for solar and alternative energy soucres. The other Bruce Padgett’s never been to China and met the wonderful people of it’s country who are still oppressed like the middle class of America. The leaders of the US, the Phillipines, Singapore and Europe, along with the billionaires can change this if they wanted to share some wealth and get rid of the greed. Absolute power absolutly corrupts.
Aug 2, 2008 - 4:06 pm