The company that hopes 2010 Winter Olympic sponsors and spectators will buy souvenir carbon offsets and pins to atone for Games-time pollution said the David Suzuki Foundation and PricewaterhouseCoopers overestimated VANOC's original carbon footprint.
The 330,000-tonne forecast from 2007 was revised to 268,000 tonnes, suggesting an overwhelming number of Games visitors will be North American.
"When we've done the calculations based on where people are actually buying tickets from and where they're traveling from, the numbers have dropped," said Offsetters president James Tansey.
The new figure was disclosed by VANOC at a Downtown Eastside theatre yesterday. Asked if the money would be better spent to aid Vancouver's homeless during the Games, University of B.C. business professor Tansey said: "The long-term solution to those kinds of problems is creating a viable economy built around the low-carbon economy."
"The long-term solution to those kinds of problems is creating a viable economy built around the low-carbon economy."
