When London was seeking the 2012 Olympics, they offered up a
plan that would ensure an environmentally friendly world event.
London promised to balance carbon emissions from the games with
clean energy investments around the world. But man was that
expensive. London organizers announced today that they were
ditching the green promise, saying that they want to keep the
focus on Britain, not the world. The London Olympics website
said: Olympic organizers will “no longer pursue formal
offsetting procedures” David Stubbs, the head of sustainability
at the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and
Paralympics Games, or LOCOG, said: “Officially, if you want to
go down certified carbon- offsetting all projects have to be
overseas, so if we plant a lot of trees in Essex that just
doesn’t count. Because the Games are in the U.K., we wanted to
maximize the Games locally. Doing formal offsetting would be
diverting things.” Bloomberg reports that more than 3.4 million
metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions will be