PARIS — Of all the decisions Paris Olympics organizers made about where to hold each sport, sending surfing competitions to the other side of the world — in the Pacific waters of Tahiti — provoked the strongest reactions. Tahitians and others railed against the building of a new viewing tower on Teahupo’o reef because of fears it would hurt marine life.

But organizers say it wasn’t just the world-class waves that lured them to the French territory 16,000 kilometers away. Paris Olympic officials had set an ambitious target of halving their overall carbon footprint compared with the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Games.

Tahiti’s surfing reef is too far offshore for fans to see the action clearly from the beach, so organizers say they calculated that most would watch on television instead of taking flights, a major source of carbon emissions.

And fewer spectators, they said, would require little new construction, another key emissions source.

“We actually did the math,” said Georgina Grenon, director of environmental excellence for the Paris Games. “There was less impact in Tahiti compared to other metropolitan areas.”

Tahiti’s selection provides a window into Games organizers’ approach to hitting their goal of reducing emissions, the driver of climate change. It also underscores an inherent tension in the drive for sustainability: There are tradeoffs, and reducing emissions doesn’t necessarily mean preserving the environment.

Organizers’ goal is to limit emissions to 1.58 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent for the July 26-August 11 Games and Paralympics that follow. That’s still a lot of pollution — equal to that of about 1.3 million economy passengers flying one way from New York to Paris on Boeing 787 jets, according to myclimate, a climate and sustainability consultancy.

It’s a lot less, however, than the footprint of previous Games.

Organizers say they’re thinking about the Games’ future, not just the planet’s. Fewer cities are volunteering to spend billions on infrastructure that sometimes falls into disuse. Paris and the next host, Los Angeles in 2028, were the only cities left in the race when picked in 2017. For organizers, hosting less-wasteful Games is key, along with including more inclusive, youth-oriented events such as skateboarding.

Paris is under additional pressure to be a sustainable model: The city hosted the 2015 U.N. climate talks that resulted in the Paris Agreement, the most significant international climate accord to date. Delegates agreed the world should limit average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above that of the 1850s, and ideally cap it at 1.5 degrees — a goal looking increasingly unattainable.

Independent experts say Paris appears to be decarbonizing in the systematic ways businesses do: Calculate total emissions, then start cutting, including myriad small CO2 savings that add up significantly. Organizers targeted reductions across three categories: construction, transportation and operations.

“They seem to be taking a very thoughtful approach,” said Adam Braun of Clarasight, which builds carbon-planning software for companies. “They are trying to do something that is indicative of how many organizations will be holding themselves accountable.”

The biggest break from previous Games is in construction. Organizers say 95% of facilities are existing or will be temporary. Two new structures were deemed unavoidable: The Olympic Village, to house athletes and later become housing and office space, and the aquatics center in Paris’ disadvantaged northern suburbs.

Using wood, low-carbon cement, and salvaged materials helped reduce emissions by 30% compared with traditional methods, Grenon said.

Reductions in operations include food. The average meal in France — restaurant- or home-prepared — produces about 2 kilograms of CO2, said Philipp Würz, the Games’ catering head. Paris aims to halve that by sourcing 80% of ingredients locally, cutting transport emissions, and offering spectators 60% plant-based foods.

Winning minds as well as taste buds could take work. “Locally grown food, and supporting local farmers, are beautiful things,” tennis player Victoria Azarenka said. But “when people are doing these big gestures, I’m not fully convinced of the impact,” she added of Paris’ overall climate efforts.

Another emissions-savings source is energy. Energy will represent only 1% of emissions, organizers said. They intend to use 100% renewable power from wind and solar farms, plus solar panels on some venues.

Stadiums and temporary venues will get power from the grid instead of diesel generators, which produce much CO2. Giant electrical plugs at venues will remain post-Games, removing the need for generators at future events.

Reducing transportation-related emissions is arguably Paris’ biggest challenge. Tourism officials expect 15.3 million visitors for the Olympics and Paralympics, including 1.9 million from outside France, with at least 850,000 taking long-haul flights.

In Paris, there are low-carbon transport options — cycling routes, Metro trains, buses and other public transit — to all venues.

But the inability to control how people get to the Olympics, or any big event, raises questions about whether humanity can afford such get-togethers at the cost of further climate damage.

“Maybe things like the Olympics have to be reconsidered,” said Seth Warren Rose of the Eneref Institute, an advocacy and research group focused on sustainable development. “Having millions of people congregate in a single area is a very intensive thing.”

Rose said organizers’ efforts are laudable, but they should have gone further — reducing emissions beyond half and finding more ways to make sustainability a central fan experience.

Some critics have also questioned some sponsors. Air France, ports operator CMA CGM Group and metals giant ArcelorMittal are leaders in carbon-intensive industries. On their websites, all tout their Olympic sponsorship and sustainability efforts.

The Upright Project, a Finnish company that creates and analyzes data to evaluate companies’ impact on the world, looked at sponsors, assigning scores for positive and negative impacts on environment, health, jobs and other metrics.

On environment, sponsors’ emissions had an overall 10-fold negative impact.

“I do find the current sustainability discourse, where we effectively celebrate companies’ miniscule sustainability tweaks and greenwashing efforts like they actually make a difference to climate change, extremely harmful,” Upright Project’s Annu Nieminen said in a statement. “If the Paris 2024 sponsors are celebrated by the organizers for their ‘sustainability,’ that’s contributing to the same harmful discourse.”

In a statement, organizers said the Games presented “a unique opportunity to encourage partner businesses to adopt more responsible practices.”

For emissions it can’t cut, Paris plans to compensate – a practice called offsetting. Planting trees, for example, could help take CO2 out of the atmosphere that the Games put in. But offset markets aren’t well regulated, and investigations by news organizations have found some projects to be fraudulent while others miscalculated the quantity of emissions captured.

Organizers say they’ll continue to adapt sustainability plans as they go, including those in Tahiti. The metal judging tower, which replaced the aging wooden one Tahiti previously used to host surfing competitions, was scaled back in size in response to concerns about environmental harm, organizers say. Finished earlier this year, the tower will be dismantled after the Games. It will be erected and used again when Teahupo’o holds world surfing events.

Organizers say they expect about 1,300 people with Olympic accreditation on the island, including 500 flying in. That total, likely much smaller than if the competition took place off France’s coast, includes surfers, judges, journalists and Games workers.

“We say that sustainability is a collective sport,” Grenon said. “Will everything be perfect? No, right? We cannot say that. We’re still working very, very hard to go as far as we can.”
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washington — Chinese artists walk a tightrope when trying to create content acceptable to Beijing’s standards while attempting to seek success among Western audiences. More than one artist who has gained recognition in the West has been punished by Chinese censors, with Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye being the most recent case.

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival featured Lou’s pseudodocumentary “An Unfinished Film” as an Official Selection, and it drew positive reviews. However, the film hardly has any chance to be publicly screened in China.

“An Unfinished Film” is about a film crew’s 2020 experience at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan.

The fictional plot follows the members of a film crew as they attempt to reshoot a movie, then are forced indoors as the city goes on lockdown.

During this time, the wife of an actor, a member of the film crew, was about to give birth. She tried to rush out of the hotel but was beaten by the security guard.

In the movie version, the wife of Jiang Cheng, the main character, was about to give birth. Desperate to be at the hospital with his wife, Jiang tried to break through the blockade but ended up in a huge scuffle with the security guards. Jiang was beaten up and forced to stay in his hotel room until the lockdown ended in Wuhan.

In the end, the actor, the director and other members of the fictional crew had to stay in the Wuhan hotel and could contact each other only by mobile phone.

The film included many real-life video clips that went viral during the lockdown, including a child crying and chasing his mother who was put on a bus to a makeshift hospital, and residents singing in a locked-down community in Wuhan at night.

Reaction to the film

The film stirred strong emotions among some viewers at the Cannes Film Festival.

After the film’s screening, someone in the audience shouted, “Lou Ye, you are the greatest director in China!”

Another person who watched the film posted on the Chinese social media site Weibo under the name Wu Ke Feng Gao, “In the second half, sobbing was heard everywhere in the theater. The audience in the back row said that everyone was crying for themselves. … To me, this is the greatest Chinese film in the past decade.”

But Zhao Liang, a former Chinese film critic living in the United States who requested to use a pseudonym to avoid retaliation from the Chinese government, had a different reaction to Lou’s film.

“This is a suicidal movie,” he told VOA.

“Lou Ye can’t [work in China anymore]; he has killed himself in front of the Chinese government,” Zhao added.

He said, “He filmed the pandemic, which is very sensitive to the Chinese government and is a subject that cannot be touched. The Chinese government has destroyed all the files related to the pandemic in the hospitals, as if COVID-19 never happened. All the files on the lockdown and all the records at the time, whether in the government, hospitals or neighborhood committees, have been destroyed.”

Lou Ye, the West and Chinese censors

Over the course of Lou’s more than 20-year career, Chinese officials have banned and censored much of his work. Only four of his twelve films have made it to big screens in China.

In 2000, his film “Suzhou River” won the Golden Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands. However, because Lou participated in the foreign film festival without official approval, the Chinese government banned the film in China and punished Lou with a two-year prohibition on filming.

In 2006, the Chinese government placed a five-year filming ban on Lou for entering the film “Summer Palace” in the Cannes Film Festival without approval.  The film was set during the taboo Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations and included explicit sexual content.

In 2019, Lou said in an interview about making the banned film, “A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind,” “Directors should be able to make movies without being threatened by censorship and express themselves freely. This is a right granted by the Constitution. … The censorship system has made the Chinese domestic audience a second-tier audience, a second-rate audience, because they simply cannot see what they should see, what they have the right to see.”

The plight of Chinese artists

Kong Ming, a former Chinese art critic living in the United States who requested to use a pseudonym to avoid retaliation from the Chinese government, told VOA that in an already competitive industry, Chinese artists have very few options to exercise their creativity.

“Chinese artists actually have nowhere to escape,” Kong said. “Even if you give up the Chinese market, you will no longer have the soil for your creations.”

Other artists who have faced Chinese censors include internationally renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his often provocative art. He experienced detention and violence at the hands of Chinese police when living in China.

In 2019, music by contemporary Chinese folk singer Li Zhi disappeared from all music streaming platforms in China. His personal Weibo and other social media accounts were also shut down.

An official reason was never given for the disappearance of Li’s music. 

Many of his works touched on the taboos of the Chinese government, including the suppression of the 1989 student movement at Tiananmen Square. During the COVID-19 White Paper Movement, he also posted photos of himself holding white paper.

In April, although Li toured major cities in Japan, attracting tens of thousands of Chinese fans, Kong said the tour in Japan was just a one-time phenomenon.

“China has tightened up its grip in all aspects. Li’s case has definitely alerted the government. In the future, any musician who wants to hold a concert abroad will need a permit,” said Kong.

It is tough for Chinese artists to find success both in China and the West, analysts said. One rare exception is Liu Cixin, the award-winning science fiction writer of The Three-Body Problem. The popularity of the trilogy has led to television adaptions in China and on Netflix about an alien race’s invasion.

“Some individuals may be able to break through the ban, but it is very rare. How many Chinese artists are there in New York? Whose career is actually growing? Almost none,” Zhao said.

In addition to the threat of censors in China, Chinese artists face challenges if they try to expand their careers overseas, Zhao said.

“First of all, the cultural gap is still severe,” he said. “Lou Ye can only shoot Chinese themes, which are also very limited. Overseas audiences care little about Chinese themes, and it is difficult to integrate. It is very difficult for Chinese artists to be truly recognized in the West.”

He said the creative soil overseas is extremely barren for individual Chinese artists, there is no support structure, and they lack funding.

“There are a few capable people, but they are all very depressed when they arrive in the United States. When they live in the U.S. they don’t interact with each other, and it’s impossible for them to come together,” he said.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report. 
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WASHINGTON — Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.

Robinson’s death was announced by Michelle Obama and other family members in a statement that said, “There was and will be only one Marian Robinson. In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life.”

She had been a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig Robinson, to help persuade their mother to move.

“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Marian Robinson wrote in the foreword to A Game of Character, a memoir by her son, formerly the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.

“My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.

Robinson wrote that her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago but still used a line of reasoning on her that she often used on him and his sister. He asked her to see the move as a chance to grow and try something new. As a compromise, she agreed to move, at least temporarily.

Her granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and 7, respectively, when the White House became home in 2009. In Chicago, Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to the girls during the 2008 presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.

At the White House, Robinson provided a reassuring presence for the girls as their parents settled into their new roles, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.

“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her 2018 memoir, Becoming. “She has always been my rock, allowing me the freedom to be who I am, while never allowing my feet to get too far off the ground. Her boundless love for my girls, and her willingness to put our needs before her own, gave me the comfort and confidence to venture out into the world knowing they were safe and cherished at home.”

Robinson gave a few media interviews but never to the White House press. Aides guarded her privacy, and, as result, she enjoyed a level of anonymity openly envied by the president and first lady. It allowed her to come and go from the White House as often as she pleased on shopping runs around town, to the president’s box at the Kennedy Center, and for trips to Las Vegas or to visit her other grandchildren in Portland, Oregon.

She attended some White House events, including concerts, the annual Easter Egg Roll and National Christmas Tree lighting, and some state dinners.

White House residency also opened up the world to Robinson, who had been a widow for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor of the White House, one floor above the first family. She had never traveled outside the U.S. until she moved to Washington.

Her first flight out of the country was aboard Air Force One in 2009, when the Obamas visited France. She joined the Obamas on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast. She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president: to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.

Craig Robinson wrote in the memoir that he and his parents doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Barack Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Without explanation, Craig Robinson said his mother gave the relationship six months.

Barack and Michelle Obama were married on October 3, 1992.

One of seven children, Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mom, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.

Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department who had multiple sclerosis. He died in 1991.
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