I dont want my name here wrote:
Imagine if they didn't bring their own A/C. Then we would have another type of outrage over not taking care of our athletes. It's a lose lose situation.
I agree. . If you're used to living with AC and can't you're at a disadvantage to athletes adapted to not having it. If you give it to some athletes who are used to it but not to others who want it that group of athletes are at a disadvantage.
I'd been to Europe three times before 1990 and four times since, all in the summer. I felt no need for AC in the earlier trips but would have liked it, or at least a box fan, in the last four. Northern Europe has gotten hotter at least some of the time. I've sort of decided if I ever go again I won't do it in the summer.
One thing I've learnt about innovative technology is that it often doesn't work as smoothly as the people creating it say it will. If this sort of cooling system had been around for a few years and it pretty much always worked it would be one thing but if I was on the Olympic team and used to sleeping in AC I probably would not want to count on this new system working.
Fianlly, let's try to think of the ecological implications here. The Olympics last for about two weeks. The athletes will begin staying there anywhere from a couple weeks to maybe a month. Twenty five hundred air conditioners is a hefty number but after the Games are done they and the people using them will be gone. Evidently the people who move into the buildings permanently will not have AC. Six or so weeks of having AC in those buildings will have no measurable affect over the life span of those buildings.