Perhaps you saw this week's story in The Wall Street Journal about how protesters are gearing up for the Olympic Games and what sponsoring companies are doing about it. Short version: Most companies are focusing on "going green":

Coke is playing up its water-conservation efforts on the Yangtze River and putting natural-refrigerant coolers and vending machines at all Olympic sites. Since March, Volkswagen has been planting thousands of trees in Inner Mongolia. GE is touting its role selling ecofriendly products such as solar-power and water-filtration systems for the Olympic venues.

By concentrating on the environment, companies can show they are acting responsibly and score points with the Chinese government while avoiding politically charged issues such as Taiwan or Darfur, PR executives say. Mr. [Richard] Edelman [of Edleman Public Relations] calls it a "win-win" situation.

A close reading of the article indicates that the most vehement and well-organized protests may actually be focused on human rights and other non-environmental issues. Which does mean that companies need to have that part of the sustainability agenda under control in terms of having appropriate policies, procedures, and programs in place.

But companies are right to focus on the environment for several reasons.

 But companies are right to focus on the environment for several reasons.

1. Dirty air will have an impact on the games themselves and on the athletes, whereas hman rights and other issues will be at one step removed. The human rights activists will be trying to draw connections to the games, but the athletes and spectators are most likely to be talking about the environment and will have every good reason to do so. They will not seem like agitators serving some other, unrelated interest.

2. The media will thus be talking about the environmental problems as part of the daily coverage of the overall "Olympic Story." Bad air is likely to affect the performances (think marathon), and it will be easy for the media to follow that angle and go deeper. Unlike human rights and even contaminated toys (the regime will make certain that there are no child laborers or contaminated toys within 1,000 miles of the Games!) there are easy, accessible visuals--smog, belching factories, traffic congestion--that will tell the story. It's the easiest story by far with no investigation and little explanation required. Also, bad air and possibly water (the foreign athletes may not be drinking from the taps) may well make this Olympics different from any other, and the media loves that.

3. Of course, all of this plays into the two biggest stories of the decade: China and climate change.
4. Then there is the political side of the environmental issue. Never having been to China, I have no real idea how big, strong and deep the environmental movement is there. (Elizabeth Economy's book on the subject, which my writing partner Karl Weber happened to work on, is probably a good place to start in learning about that topic.) But my guess is that the Olympics, and the presence of the international media, will give that movement plenty of cover, not to mention the international environmental activists who will be at the head of the parade. It will be hard for the government to arrest them all, if they do join hands. They would look really bad if they just arrested the locals, and even worse if they put the foreigners in the clink.

And if there are protests and arrests that just gives the media an even bigger story to cover.

5. Finally, I think the human rights activists may understand all of this, and may rally behind the environment as a wedge issue. That's what happened in Hungary--the democracy movement rallied and prevailed around environmental concerns related to the planned construction of a large hydroelectric dam. In so doing, they served their broader political goals--undermining the power and authority of an autocratic central government, and demonstrating to the public that they could affect change if they chose to do so.

For all these reasons, a green focus is a very reasonable strategy for sponsoring companies to use in dealing with the challenges of China 08.