Vancouver Games: Spectacle or sustainable?

Will the Vancouver Winter Games leave a legacy of sustainability or will it be business as usual come spring?

Someone asked me recently about the sustainability legacy that will be left behind by the Games, and I had to give my head a shake. Sustainability legacy? You’ve got to be kidding.

I’m all for amateur sport, and I’m thrilled by the national pride and the pride in our city the games have whipped up. But let’s not pretend the Games are something they aren’t. When the IOC came to Vancouver, it wasn’t with the intention of boosting sustainability in our city. Far from it. In fact, I see corporate and government greenwashing pumped up to unprecedented levels, spurred on by the Games.

As I watch the sun rise over the North Shore mountains this morning, I can’t help but be just a little ticked at the wind turbine atop Grouse Mountain that now dominates our city’s iconic mountainscape. This token gesture to sustainability was erected hastily in time for the Games. For two decades, dedicated entrepreneurs have been struggling to make headway with wind energy in this province. They’ve run up against red tape with permitting, and when that hurdle is cleared, they run up against money problems. To date not a single project has proceeded to build-out. Then the Games come, and boom, an Olympics souvenir is helicoptered in and deposited atop a tourist destination visible from every point in the city. No one has any delusions that this has anything to do with a lasting infrastructure of sustainable energy.

Similarly, tourists in Whistler will see a fleet of municipal buses loudly proclaiming they’re powered by fuel cells and fuelled by hydrogen. This initiative was subsidized by government and industry lobby groups. The hydrogen fuel has to be hauled to Whistler in tanker cars. At nearly a million bucks a pop, no one is under any delusion that these buses have anything to do with a lasting transportation infrastructure.

Then there’s the $8 million railway track the city laid for a 60-day product demonstration for Bombardier. Sure, the streetcars are really cool, and it would be neat if we had them zipping people around Vancouver. But after the Games, Bombardier is taking their demo models back.

So will the Games leave a legacy of sustainability initiatives? They’ll leave a few green buildings, which I guess are better than the alternative. They’ve accelerated political will to do something about homelessness—though lasting solutions are still nowhere in sight.

The Games are just a spectacle that will come and go. I don’t believe anyone—even Games organizers—would try to make any claim about a lasting legacy of sustainability.