Will India Boycott Olympics Because of 1984 Environmental Disaster?

The 2012 London Olympics are getting ever closer, and so is the Indian government’s anger over Dow Chemical being an Olympic sponsor.

Back in 1984, a gas leak at a Dow Chemical plant in India killed over 15,000 people, making it one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

That Dow Chemical would be a sponsor at the 2012 Olympics, which is to stress environmental friendliness, has infuriated the Indian government, which may boycott the Games.

In December India complained to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that Dow Chemical’s involvement in the Games “militates against the fundamental ethical principles of the Olympic movement.”

For more on all this, read this Times of India story.

Environmentalists Don’t Want Team USA Practicing on ‘Endangered’ Wooden Floor

 

The basketball team representing the United States in the 2012 Olympics in England is scheduled to train on a wooden floor made out of trees from an officially-protected forest that is home to some of the world’s most endangered species – and that has environmentalists up in arms.

According to this article in The Independent, the team will practice in England on a basketball court made out of timber from a eucalyptus-tree forest in Tasmania that is supposed to be protected. Nevertheless, illegal loggers continue to cut down its trees, some of which have been used to fashion a basketball court in England on which Team USA will practice.

The forest reportedly is home to the endangered Tasmanian Devil and the Tasmanian Wedge-Tailed Eagle.

According to environmental groups in Australia, Tasmania’s forests “are being trashed so that plywood can be sold to the international trade. It’s a tragedy that the trail of destruction has led to London’s Olympic Games” – and to the US’s national basketball team.