Everything's gone green

Two interesting 'green' stories recently that seemingly serve to highlight sport's environmental credentials: http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/169689/ryder-cup-goes-green and http://www.insidethegames.com//show-news.php?id=5956 When it comes to the environment, is sport really so virtuous? Or is it an inconvenient truth that many sports are complicit in the environmental problems we are increasingly having to face up to? When one thinks about, for instance, the land and resource usage associated with golf; the intense and frequent use of fossil fuels in motor sport; the waste generated by sports fans; and the plastics and other artificial materials used in sport, aren't initiatives such as those covered by the above web links merely a sop to the green lobby? Perhaps environmental concerns in sport are nothing more than a constituent part of some vague or poorly defined notion of corporate responsibility? In these terms, surely sport is thus part of the problem, not part of the solution? Or is this being unfair? Is it not the case that many sports are actually waking up to their environmental responsibilities, and that we are seeing positive action and considerable dynamism e.g. FIFA's 2006 World Cup in Germany was labelled football's greenest ever championship? Given the global profile of many sports, allied to the loyalty and affinity exhibited by its fans, surely sport has a hugely important role to play in trumpeting new environmental initiatives? Might there be an opportunity for some sports/sport organisations to establish a market position or brand image based on clear and well defined responses to environmental concerns? In which case, to what extent might sport organisations be able to set environmental performance benchmarks that organisations in other industrial sectors might be able to follow?