Because there’s really nothing else to write about the Beijing Olympics.

But hey, we’ll promise to have something better next time. With the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China upon us, why don’t we talk about the Games’ effect on its own country shall we?

As hosts to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Beijing has undertaken a program of measures to improve the urban environment, not just for the Games but also for the future benefit of its citizens.

Their program of ”cleaning and greening the city” had Beijing spending over USD 16 billion (120 billion Yuan) tackling its chronic pollution to create a cleaner and greener city. This includes relocating polluting factories, increasing green space, improving waste management and water treatment, and adding more subway lines while scrapping older, polluting vehicles and introducing more ecologically-friendly buses. Alternative energy sources, such as wind farms and solar power, are also helping to lessen the reliance on coal-fired energy.

A recent United Nations Environment Program report lauded the ‘’significant strides” made by Beijing. UNEP Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner said, ”the initial score card on the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics 2008 is positive in terms of the greening of the Games.”

He added the money ”appears to have been well spent, and will be even more well spent if the lessons learned and measures adopted are picked by municipalities across the country so as to leave a real and lasting nationwide legacy.”

For Greenpeace China, which has been liaising with BOCOG since 2006, ”it is not so much to green the Games, but to ensure that environmental successes achieved for the Olympic Games will have a wider impact beyond 2008.”

”We have reasons to be confident. We are looking forward to lessons and experiences gained in the preparation of the Green Olympics being radiated to other parts of China,” underlines Frances Fremont-Smith, Executive Director of Future Generations/China, another NGO that has organized two Green Long Marches.

The most recent one of these marches, in April 2008, gathered around 4,000 students from 55 universities from across the country. They crossed China to research environmental protection and share their enthusiasm for the Games.

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2008 Beijing, China Olympic Games