Greenpeace, which managed to hoodwink first an Olympic Coordination Authority and then a continent with the insertion of a tiny phrase in self-styled environmental guidelines written up for 2000 Sydney Olympic games, has forged its way into the boardrooms of the Toronto Olympic Bid.
There will be no room for public input on a "green games" fate for Toronto until the end of the year, Our Toronto has discovered.
"The (environment) committee hasn’t designed a public process yet," Suzanne Barrett of the Waterfront regeneration Trust (WRT), who has been organizing the Toronto bid’s environment committee, told Our Toronto. "Materials will need to go to city council."
When asked when the information could be expected to reach council, Barrett answered: "Sometime toward the end of this year."
Olympic T.O.-Bidco CEO John Bitove did not return repeated Our Toronto telephone calls.
Top Toronto Olympic bid members have been meeting with high level "green games" Greenpeace Australia activist Dr. Darryl Luscombe. Luscombe has told Olympic bid members that the Sydney Games prove an environmentally sustainable future is possible, and that Toronto should consider the same positive spin-offs when it submits its Olympic bid.
Luscombe's counterpart Greenpeace Canada's Toxic Campaigner Morag Simpson has already joined the Toronto Olympic bid's Environment Committee.
Greenpeace scored inclusion of an anti-PVC clause with a commitment from Sydney’s Olympic bid team: "Minimizing and ideally avoiding the use of chlorine-based products (organo-chlorines) such as PVC plastics, PCBs and chlorine-bleached paper."
PCBs have been out of production for years, but PVC as one Australian newspaper puts it, "is as common as nails". When asked whether Canadian industry had been advised that members of the same organization which banned the use of PVC in the Sydney Games were being entertained by Toronto Olympic bid members, Barrett answered: "We’re not on an investigation."
With Sydney burning the midnight oil to finalize its environmental guidelines for formal presentation to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Australians present at the last meeting of the environment sub-committee recall people holed up in the corridors and washrooms.
"Anxiety created a most strained atmosphere when Greenpeace threatened to abandon its support for the Green Games unless they got their way," recalled one participant.
Greenpeace did get its way and by the time the plastics industry found out, the anti-PVC clause was already a fait accompli.
Having successfully influenced the Olympic Co-ordination Authority to incorporate the anti-PVC clause, Greenpeace activists raided the main Sydney Olympic site, digging up PVC pipes. Greenpeace activists went on to "monitor implementation" of Sydney's environmental guidelines, and as late as last December were conducting legal action against the Authority "for planning to install an ozone-destroying air conditioning system at the Olympic SuperDome whilst proclaiming adherence to the Environmental Guidelines."PVC (polyvinylchlorides) is one of the most basic materials used in our homes and on building projects around the globe.
Greenpeace got its foot in the door in the salad days of what some still call "Sydney's obsessive Olympic bid". It was Greenpeace's anonymous design proposal that was one of five chosen by the Sydney 2000 committee to form the basis of the Olympic village, now touted by Greenpeace as the world's largest "solar suburb".
In securing status, Greenpeace goes whole hog. The latest chapters written in the history of Greenpeace and the Olympics testify that the inclusion of the anti-PVC clause went well beyond the Olympic Coordination Authority when the Australian government had to adhere to the legal contract they signed with the IOC. During the Olympic battle, the well-respected Australian Government Scientific Institute, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization) was mandated to investigate the environmental aspects of the use of PVC in building products.
The CSIRO final report, based on scientific literature and reports by government agencies and universities throughout the world, was straightforward: "The adverse and environmental effects of using PVC in building products are very small, and no greater than those of other materials", and "although little detailed comparative information is available, the balance of evidence suggests that there is no alternative material to PVC in its major building product applications that has less overall effect on the environment."
According to the Belgium-based group the Chlorophiles, "PVC is the most investigated bulk product in the world, so when more investigations will be done on alternatives, they can only turn up to be worse."
Environmental disadvantages of avoiding PVC aside, the costs involved are worthy of note. Sydney-based scientific consultants BIS Shrapnel Pty Ltd., estimate that avoiding PVC in Sydney's Olympic facilities would add about $9.48-million to construction costs.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, in Oct., 1996...""In its (Greenpeace's) whale mission it has emotion and human empathy on its side. On the anti-nuclear front, fear and the lunacy of mutually assured self-annihilation help to carry the day. But in the chemicals campaign, Greenpeace faces a more complex task, with its damning rhetoric being challenged by cold calculating science--funded by a PVC industry worth $500-million a year in Australia alone."
In a somewhat ironic turn of the Olympic adventures, Greenpeace activists in opening chapters, bailed out to join up with developers in the Sydney Olympic's building process.
Palul Gilding ran Greenpeace Australia when the environmental organization began its shotgun wedding with the Sydney Olympics and was Greenpeace International Executive Director when fateful "green games" came under public spotlight. At last count, Gilding was private adviser to a big athlete’s village consortium.
Gilding's running mate and former cities campaigner Karla Bell has also climbed up the corporate ladder by forming Karla Bell and Associates, with an expanding consulting and business operation concentrating on Olympics projects in Australia and abroad--including an unsuccessful village bid.
Bell was key in forming the Games-Greenpeace alliance when she brought in architect Rod Simpson to draft blueprints for a pre-bid design for the village, the one later honoured as one of five winners in a contest. These days, Simpson is an environmental adviser to the other short-listed village consortium, spearheaded by giant developer Multiplex. With the awareness that green business is lucrative business out in the open, competition is bound to be rife where Greenpeace and Olympic games are concerned.
In the 25-year history that saw Greenpeace grow to the status of world's largest environmental organization, Greenpeace activists have become masters of the modern slogan. In light of the number of Olympic games projected for the coming new millennium, perhaps it's time for a new one: "Save the Environment from Greenpeace."
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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