Beijing’s Olympic Village Takes Home LEED Award

Rare is the day you hear “green” and “China” anywhere in the same neighborhood, but such was the unusual case yesterday as US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson awarded the nation a Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design award for their work designing and building the Olympic Village up to green standards. The 42 buildings that house the nearly 20,000 atheletes have been heralded as going above and beyond in greening it up, and will be turned into green luxury apartments after the Olympics packs up and heads out of town in just a bit. We think it’s grand that they’re doing all of this cleaning up, but call us a little skeptical on how fast this award makes the government concentrate on getting the rest of the country cleaned up once the cameras aren’t rolling and Henry Paulson isn’t handing out shiny medals to them anymore. Wait, why is Henry Paulson giving out this award to begin with?! Was he just the only guy free that day?

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