Environmental Impact of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
Every four years, millions of people across the world tune in to watch the Winter Olympics. Athletes this year traveled to Beijing, China to compete in events such as skiing, ski jumping, and snowboarding. While these sports all differ in their rules, they share a common dependence on snow, an aspect of many winter activities that rarely ever occurs in Beijing. To compensate for this issue, Beijing used entirely machine-made snow for its outdoor events, making history as the first Winter Olympics to do so.
Water is imperative to making this artificial form of snow. However, according to The New York Times, Beijing’s quick development has reduced their groundwater. Additionally, a weather station near the Olympic venues reported that the city and nearby mountains get less than 2.5 inches of precipitation per season. Inevitably, this led to problems when about 49 million gallons of water were needed to make snow in one of the most water-scarce cities in the world. The making of artificial snow requires not only an immense amount of water but large quantities of energy. To produce this Olympic snow, water was pumped through 300 snowmaking guns, and the process required 130 fan-driven generators and eight cooling towers.
Despite organizers’ vows to have a “green” Olympics with a minimized carbon footprint, many critics have pointed out that hosting the games in a location with minimal water and natural snow contradicts that goal. Sports ecologist Madeline Orr said, “To rely 100 percent on artificial snow does signal that the Olympics have landed in a place that is not climatically suitable.”
If climate change and greenhouse gas emissions continue to get worse, the future of the Winter Olympics will dim. Warm temperatures can prevent the snowmaking guns from dispensing snow, like in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics where snow was brought on helicopters from alternate locations because it was too warm to be artificially made. A recent study projected that only one of the past 21 Winter Olympics hosts would be able to reliably host the games again by 2080. This may imply an increase in the amount of time and money taken to put on the games and an overall reduction in the number of cities able to host in the first place.
The future of the Winter Olympics is certainly in jeopardy as climate change gets progressively worse. On the other hand, the environmental toll of the games is also likely to increase. While many aspects of the Winter Olympics are up in the air, one thing is clear: climate change will play a major role in determining how the games are produced.
