The backlash against the not so humble Olympic firework should not come as a  great surprise. The Olympic Movement’s own green credentials are there for all to see in their  Charter.

"To encourage and support a responsible concern for environmental issues, to promote sustainable development in sport and require that Olympic Games are held accordingly," it says.

Yet in Beijing some 600 people were involved in setting off some 11,462 fireworks and that was in a display that lasted all of 20 seconds to get the Opening Ceremony underway.A few moments later "Footprints of history" were in the words of the organisers "29 colossal burning footprints ...one per second  all the way along Beijing’s central axis to the Olympic stadium".

This was to celebrate the invention of gunpowder, one of the four great inventions in ancient China. A further three-and-a-half minutes of fireworks followed the lighting of the cauldron itself. Add to that the number of fireworks used at the closing, and in the many rehearsals, the Olympic  contribution to the smog above the city must have been considerable.

In recent  Games  the  cavalcade of giant fireworks above the stadium has become a signature opening as the countdown reaches its crescendo and the Opening Ceremony is under way. It was not always so.

Olympic fireworks were scarce for the best part of a century, for the very good reason that by and large ceremonies before 1992 were held during the day. True,there were searchlights  above Berlin’s Olympic Stadium as the Games closed  in 1936, and as  the Roman crowd spontaneously set light to their programmes as they ended in  1960 as a way of saying Arrivederci to the departing Olympians. 

The first truly colossal firework display came in 1984 in a city not unknown for its smog, Los Angeles. By this time the Closing Ceremony had switched to the evening.

Seoul 1988 was the last daytime Ceremony for a summer Olympics (Only the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in  Nagano has since been opened in daylight). It was held under clear blue skies and in bright sunshine. It also featured a  release of doves before the lighting of the cauldron. Evidently unaware of  Olympic ritual, some of the birds came to rest of the edge of the bowl. A few minutes later, the flame burst into life with deadly  consequences for the birds, to the outrage of wildlife welfare groups.

In subsequent Games, symbolic representations of the doves were used. In Atlanta performers carried kites to represent the birds and later, even the spectator kits included cut outs for the spectators to wave. Dancers symbolised the movements of the doves in Beijing. Officially the reason for all these variations  was because birds could not fly at night, but also,whisper it quietly, to avoid another cauldron disaster.

It was not  the first time that Olympic ceremony had been altered for environmental reasons. When Ron Clarke lit the flame at the 1956 Games in Melbourne, he suffered burns to his arm because the flame included magnesium to make it flare .Since then, organisers have been at pains to point out the environmental virtues of their flames.

Guy Fawkes night apart, fireworks have long been a part of sporting celebration in Britain. Back in 1892,when Lord Kinnaird opened  Everton’s Goodison Park ,a display of pyrotechnics burst above the new stadium in celebration. More recently organisers of big rugby and football matches seem to feel no occasion is  grand enough without the addition of the smoke,flares and fireworks.

But even if Danny Boyle and co have a hankering for some outsize roman candles, sparklers and the like, they might recall when the 1986 Commonwealth Games were held in the "Trainspotting" city of Edinburgh and against a light grey sky in early evening, the fireworks looked simply messy. 

Long summer nights in London would cause similar difficulties for  fireworks. Whereas it was virtually dark when things got underway in both Athens and Beijing,at 8pm in London in July, the sun might still be shining.

When the smoke clears the wider issue remains. Have the Olympic ceremonies become just too big? Not for nothing have they been described as the first gold medal of the Games.Ever since Moscow’s tour de force in 1980 and the Los Angeles Hollywood spectacular which followed four years later, each city has tried to be bigger and better than the last.

The budget for the 2006 Asian Games in Doha was so big that the organisers steadfastly refused to reveal the final figure involved and there was a similar story in Beijing. London’s organisers know that they won’t be able to emulate Doha or Beijing, they do know that with or without fireworks, the first headlines of London 2012 will be created  by their  Opening Ceremony.

Philip Barker, a freelance journalist, has been on the editorial team of the Journal of Olympic History and is credited with having transformed the publication into one of the most respected historical publications on the history of the Olympic Games. He is also an expert on Olympic Music, a field which is not generally well known.