I don't recall the specific Olympics, but NBC was the American affiliate and it was wall to wall Green everything. "Green" as a type of thing was introduced to the collective culture and pushed obsessively starting then. During the opening ceremonies the news anchor in charge had the gall to stage them 'dimming' the lights in their studio to save energy to be more Green. He also had the complete lack of self-awareness to declare that the saved wattage by just dimming those studio lights for the (only 10 minute!) segment was the equivalent of an entire year of a normal American household electricity usage saved. Begging the question of what in hell "Green" is if it would take a mortal man a year of living like a Luddite to compare to 10 minutes of the lights being on in a TV studio.

I did a little searching but came up empty for a clip of this, but I would really appreciate anyone who could find it.

To my memory "Green" as a product category label was not widespread and certainly not a synonym for "Carbon Offset" as it came to mean rapidly thereafter. It was an institutional media blitz that lasted years and I watched it progress through everything. Grocery store items, car accessories, fucking bedsheets. From that point and for many years after "Green" had to be on the box somewhere or you were part of the problem.