Truckloads of snow cover up Olympics’ green goals

Helicopters, dump trucks and hundreds of workers are hauling snow around Vancouver to try and save the 2010 Olympic Games.

And yet Canadian officials are still calling this the greenest games ever. Judging by the Olympic Committee’s sustainability plan, Canada thought of everything except the obvious: Skiing isn’t so easy on dirt.

The green games include everything from an agreement with the aboriginal people to ethical purchasing to developing a carbon neutral philosophy. The carbon neutral fact sheet even says, “The most important step? Reduce, reduce, reduce.”

Now I’m not going to pretend I know much about hosting international competition, but I have been to Whistler – the site where Vancouver’s alpine skiing will take place.

Whistler is a huge ski resort – one of the biggest in the Americas, actually. It is also at a much higher elevation than Vancouver. While Vancouver is shadowed in gray these days, Whistler has plenty of snow to go around. Unfortunately, the snowboarding and freestyle ski events are booked at Cypress Mountain – a much lower elevation location without any natural snowfall.

My question: Why didn’t the Olympic Committee choose to build a venue for the snowboarding and trick ski events at Whistler? The fact that Canada, a country known for winter sports, has to move snow around in order to host a winter sports competition is embarrassing – especially at a time when Washington, D.C., is knee deep in the white stuff.

Not only is it embarrassing, but it also goes against all the great green planning the country has done. The Olympics should set a high bar for its own sustainability, if for no other reason than to show the world what’s possible. Using gas-guzzling dump trucks and helicopters to bend nature doesn’t exactly get the trick done.