One World, One Dream

Emotion was high, as the Opening Ceremony not only officially started the Summer Games but was a symbolic expression of a nation seeking its place as a global superpower

Fireworks, athletes and pageantry on a scale never before seen in the Olympics opened the Summer Games in Beijing on August the 8th as the Asian nation kicked off the biggest and most scrutinised Games in history.

China didn't just walk onto the world stage. It soared over it. At Last, playing its long-sought role as Olympic host, China opened the Summer Games in spectacular fashion with an extravaganza of fireworks dramatising its ascendancy as a global power.

Such was the extravagance of what was displayed that, the London 2012 Olympics Committee must be wondering how on earth they will top it in a modest stadium in Stratford.

Disasters, environmental problems and human rights disputes preceded the games, and questions abound about how they will unfold. But after two weeks of competitions the world witnessed one of the most spectacular Olympics games ever.

'For a long time, China has dreamed of opening its doors and inviting the world's athletes to Beijing for the Olympic Games,' IOC president Jacques Rogge said in his Opening Ceremony speech. 'Tonight, that dream comes true.'
And the right decision it was when the International Olympic Committee decided to take the games to the homeland of 1.3 billion people, a fifth of humanity.

Scores of world leaders were on hand, and a TV audience of over 4 billion worldwide for what was certainly the costliest and probably the largest opening ceremony in Olympic history World leaders, including President Bush, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were among the 80 heads of state and royal family members who endured heat and humidity to watch China make this bold declaration that it had arrived.

The Games have been described as the most politicised since 1980 event in Moscow, which was marked by a boycott in protest at the Soviet war in Afghanistan. But this time China already an economic powerhouse make the Beijing games an event no one could afford to miss. The run-up to the games had powerful story lines ' China investing $40 billion to build Olympic infrastructure, reeling from the Sichuan earthquake, struggling right through Friday to diminish the stubborn smog that enveloped the stadium, known as the Bird's Nest. The story presented in the Opening night sought to distil 5,000 years of Chinese history ' featuring everything from the Great Wall to opera puppets to astronauts, and highlighting achievements in art, music and science. Roughly 15,000 people were in the cast and crew, all under the direction of Chinese film director Zhang Yimou. He produced some majestic and ethereal imagery. At the start, 2,008 drummers beat out a pulsating rhythm with their hands. Later, a huge, translucent globe emerged from the stadium floor, and acrobats floated magically around it to the accompaniment of the games' theme song, 'One World One Dream' To their eyes, the omens were good. The ceremony began at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008 ' auspicious in a country where eight is the luckiest number.

The Olympic games run until August. 24, with 10,500 athletes from a record 204 nations chasing 302 gold medals in 28 sports. China consolidates his sporting supremacy as it top for the first time the U.S. in the gold-medal tally.

A Green Olympics
China won its bid for the 2008 games in part by vowing to put on a 'Green Olympics' ' a symphony of clean tech and energy efficiency that will make Greenpeace proud.

The design and operation of the Olympic Village and Olympic venues (all of the Olympic buildings total nearly 2 million square meters) are a statement of the central government's vision of a new China powered by renewable energy and driven by conservation and environmental protection. The aspirations of the Chinese to create a 'green' future were on display during the Olympics. In the six years since awarded the games, officials battled to make that happen. They've shuttered the worst of Chairman Mao's beloved old blast furnaces, breaking up streets to build subway lines, upgraded sewage treatment plants. They planted millions of trees, and pulverised a nearby mountain for fresh soil.

There's also plenty of showboating. The new national stadium ' the Bird's Nest ' is rigged with an intricate rainwater-capture system to feed the infield grass. The bubbly blue National Aquatic Centre ' better known as the Water Cube ' is wrapped in a high-efficiency thermal polymer skin. The Olympic Village was outfitted with solar- powered showers. A fleet of electric buses was on the way, along with 3,000 lithium-ion garbage trucks.

During the Olympics, China showcased a robust assortment of renewable energy and energy efficiency features. More than one quarter of all energy consumed at Olympic venues did come from renewable sources, including solar power, which generated nearly 8 million kilowatt- hours (kWh) of power for Olympic facilities and wind power, which provided 20% of the power needed of the Olympic venues. Suntech Power of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province provided the 130 kW solar system for the 'Bird's Nest' Stadium. In addition, Canadian Solar provided 66 kilowatts (kW) of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) for the lampposts along Olympic Boulevard.

The wind farm that supplied power to the Olympic venues in Beijing is Beijing's first; it is comprised of 43 wind turbines developed and manufactured by a Chinese wind turbine company. The solar energy hot water system that was installed in the Olympic Village was designed to provide sufficient hot water to satisfy the washing needs of the Olympics' 12,000 athletes, trainers and other personnel, and provide potable water.

Eighty to ninety percent of the streetlights in the vicinity of Olympic venues were solar-powered streetlights. Another system that was displayed at the Olympics was a new solar technology known as the Solar Wall hybrid PV/thermal system that produces both electricity and heat.

The National Aquatic Centre ' known as the 'Water Cube' ' was built to allow the roof and the outer surfaces of the building to collect and recycle as much as 140,000 tons per year of rainwater, clean water and pool water. Advanced building techniques were said to allow Olympics venues to save 50% or more of the energy consumed by typical buildings. One prominent example is the high efficiency thermal polymer skin encasing the National Aquatic Centre that greatly decreases energy consumption at that Olympic venue. More than a million trees were planted in and around Olympic venues. There were 500 alternative energy vehicles operating within the Olympic Village. The renewable energy vehicles that were used at the Olympics include 20 hydrogen fuel cells, 55 electric and 25 hybrids passenger vehicles. In Qingdao, the Olympic Sailing Centre, which was constructed at a cost of more than US $1.7 million, use solar power technology to operate the air conditioning system in summer, provide heat in the fall and winter and supply hot water year round; the system will save an estimated US $900,000 each year. The Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre also utilises a seawater-source heat pump technology.

As is so often the case with politics, this is not the China that the Games' critic told you about, but without a doubt the Summer Olympics in Beijing presented to the world the desire dream of China's for a environmental and energy stewardship. Will China's future development realise the promise of the enlightened environmental and energy infrastructure displayed at the Olympic venues or will the Olympic Village turn out to have been just a dream Village'

Biofuel & Food Prices

Recent dramatic increases in food prices are having severe consequences for poor countries and poor people. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports that food prices rose by nearly 40 percent in 2007 and made further large jumps in early 2008. Nearly all-agricultural commodities,including rice, maize, wheat, meat, dairy products, soybeans, palm oil, and cassava, are affected. In response to the price hikes, food riots have occurred in many developing countries.

Various pressures on international grain markets have contributed to the rapid price increases during the past several years, and definitely biofuels have been one of the major contributors. Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and is not a major factor responsible for the large price increases,' said a report by the World Bank in July this year, disputing earlier claims from the USA that higher demand from India and China has led to higher food prices. The report argued that the European Union (EU) and U.S. drive for biofuels has put by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

How it all began
In 1974, as the United States was reeling from the oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Congress took the first of many legislative steps to promote ethanol made from corn as an alternative fuel. The gradual phase-out of lead in the 1970s and 1980s provided an additional boost to the fledgling ethanol industry. (Lead, a toxic substance, is a performance enhancer when added to gasoline, and it was partly replaced by ethanol.) A series of tax breaks and subsidies also helped.

Now, thanks to a combination of high oil prices and even more generous government subsidies, corn-based ethanol has become the rage. There were 120 ethanol refineries in operation in the United States at the end of 2006, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. By the end of 2008, the United States' ethanol production capacity will reach an estimated 11.4 billion gallons per year. In his latest State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called on the country to produce 35 billion gallons of renewable fuel a year by 2017, nearly five times the level currently mandated. The push for ethanol and other biofuels has spawned an industry that depends on billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, and not only in the United States. In 2007, global ethanol production was 11.66 billion gallons, of which Brazil produced 45.2 percent (from sugar cane) and the United States 44.5 percent (from corn). Global production of biodiesel (most of it in Europe), made from oilseeds, was almost one billion gallons.

The industry's growth has meant that a larger and larger share of corn production is being used to feed the huge mills that produce ethanol.
The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) . Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.

Brazil, which currently produces approximately the same amount of ethanol as the United States, derives almost all of it from sugar cane. Like the United States, Brazil began its quest for alternative energy in the mid-1970s. The government has offered incentives, set technical standards, and invested in supporting technologies and market promotion. It has mandated that all diesels contain two percent biodiesel by 2008 and five percent biodiesel by 2013. It has also required that the auto industry produce engines that can use biofuels and has developed wide-ranging industrial and land-use strategies to promote them. Other countries are also jumping on the biofuels bandwagon. In Southeast Asia, vast areas of tropical forest are being cleared and burned to plant oil palms destined for conversion to biodiesel.

STARVING THE HUNGRY
Biofuels may have even more devastating effects in the rest of the world, especially on the prices of basic foods. If oil prices remain high ' which is likely ' the people most vulnerable to the price hikes brought on by the biofuels boom will be those in countries that both suffer food deficits and import petroleum. The risk extends to a large part of the developing world.

THE GRASS IS GREENER
And for what' Limited environmental benefits at best. Although it is important to think of ways to develop renewable energy, one should also carefully examine the eager claims that biofuels are 'green.' Ethanol and biodiesel are often viewed as environmentally friendly because they are plant-based rather than petroleum-based. In fact, even if the entire corn crop in the United States were used to make ethanol, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of current U.S. gasoline use.
Should corn and soybeans be used as fuel crops at all' Soybeans and especially corn are row crops that contribute to soil erosion and water pollution and require large amounts of fertiliser, pesticides, and fuel to grow, harvest, and dry. They are the major cause of nitrogen runoff ' the harmful leakage of nitrogen from fields when it rains ' of the type that has created the so-called dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an ocean area the size of New Jersey that has so little oxygen it can barely support life. But as corn increasingly displaces soybeans as a main source of ethanol, it will be cropped continuously, which will require major increases in nitrogen fertiliser and aggravate the nitrogen runoff problem. Nor is corn-based ethanol very fuel-efficient. Debates over the 'net energy balance' of biofuels and gasoline ' the ratio between the energy they produce and the energy needed to produce them ' have raged for decades.
The future can be brighter if the right steps are taken now. Limiting the world dependence on fossil fuels requires a comprehensive energy- conservation program. Rather than promoting more mandates, tax breaks, and subsidies for biofuels, governments should make a major commitment to substantially increasing energy efficiency in vehicles, homes, and factories; promoting alternative sources of energy, such as solar and wind power; and investing in research to improve agricultural productivity and raise the efficiency of fuels derived from cellulose. Washington's fixation on corn-based ethanol has distorted the national agenda and diverted its attention from developing a broad and balanced strategy. In March, the U.S. Energy Department announced that it would invest up to $385 million in six biorefineries designed to convert cellulose into ethanol. That is a promising step in the right direction.
Still, some suggest that the overheated ethanol market could soon cool down. 'Politicians will see that, first of all, it is not helping our oil independence. It is increasing the price of food for people around the world, it is costing an enormous sum of money for everyone, and it is contributing to environmental problems. But I can imagine it is going to take another year or more before politicians realise they have a major disaster on their hands.'