For the past few decades, fake snow became an essential ingredient of all Winter Olympics as climate change drastically cut down natural snowfall decimating ice sheets in most venues. But Beijing is going to be the first one that will hold the winter version of the Olympics completely on artificial snow.

For instance, Zhangjiakan, the major destination for ski events, hardly gets a few centimeters of snowfall which is too inadequate to allow athletes smoothly slither down the slopes of ice. So, the organizers of the event had to hire snow suppliers from Italy who use multiple snow guns and lances to create tons of fake snow and phony blizzards.

But, for such colossal snow-making efforts the machines have to draw 49 million gallons of water from nearby natural reservoirs in the neighborhood of parched Beijing, a place not very far from arid and cold Gobi Desert. The huge city of over 2 crore people largely depends on water extracted from underground and portion diverted from wetter surroundings.

China had promised a “green” Olympics that will be both “carbon neutral” and “inclusive”. But such promises seem too tall considering the fact that the country produces the largest amount of greenhouse gas and has yet to fix a moratorium on coal burning. Instead of cutting down its coal- powered plants the use of coal rose 5% to a whopping 4.07 billion tonnes last year.

However, to demonstrate its commitment to reach carbon neutrality in 2060, the country will showcase 1000 hydrogen-powered buses in the Olympic village. The country has also promised to plant trees to offset the afforestation done to organize the events.

But the organizers were not transparent about how they would source such a huge amount of water required in the Olympic village and also to run the snow machines. The international Olympic Committee has been facing questions on the environmental cost of the Games and also its decision to allow snow-scarce Beijing to organize Winter Olympics.

READ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/01/20/china-winter-olympics-snow-pollution/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/06/mounting-concern-over-environmental-cost-of-fake-snow-for-olympics

https://www.si.com/olympics/2022/01/24/how-is-snow-made-artificial-winter-olympics-beijing