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Environment & Health • Opinion

Hong Kong, Asia’s World

City, should be a global
leader in tackling climate
change
19 May 2019 10:00 • Dhanada Kanta Mishra • 5 min read

Donate

On March 15, some 1,000 Hong Kong school students joined the global march for clim
action inspired by 16-year-old Greta Thurnberg. She came into the international limel
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take urgent action to stop climate change.

Millions of school children and young people around the world have since followed in
footsteps as she continues to boycott school every Friday in protest. She has since add
the World Economic Forum in Davos, the UK parliament and the European Parliament
was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by some Swedish parliamentarians.

In their letter to the government, the Hong Kong school children made three specific
demands:

1. Youth representation in the Hong Kong government’s steering committee on clima

change;
2. An increased target for renewable energy use from the current 3-4% by 2030;
3. Appointment of an officer in the environment department to monitor action on the
Climate 2030 plan.

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Photo: PH Yang.

The school strike in Hong Kong seemed to take both school authorities and the govern
by surprise. They thought Hong Kong was doing as well as it could to prepare, mitigat
adapt for climate change. School authorities discouraged the students strongly. Some
schools said they would treat absence on the day as unauthorised leave.

The government, responded to the children’s demand through a letter from the secret
the environment. It explained how the formation of the steering committee, the climat
action plan 2030+ and recent actions such as bringing in feed-in tariffs for roof-top so
were more than what Hong Kong has to do to meet its obligations under the Paris
agreement.

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Photo: PH Yang.

Hong Kong – ‘the world city of Asia’ – is already the global leader on many fronts. It is
number one city in the world when it comes to any number of financial and economic
indicators. It is in the top ten cities in the world on many other rankings. Hong Kong
impresses all newcomers with its breath-taking skyline and world-class infrastructure

It is therefore pertinent to ask whether Hong Kong has the potential to lead the world
all-important battle against climate change.

Photo: GovHK.

Last week the Inter-Governmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosys

Services presented a comprehensive assessment of humanity’s ecological footprint. M
than a million species face immediate extinction. Last year the UN’s intergovernmenta
panel on climate warned of dire consequences in the current trends of greenhouse ga
emissions.

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been completely decimated by the election of Donald Trump and the US withdrawal fr
treaty.

The increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere correlate strongly with the
average global temperature, now over 1 degree centigrade above pre-industrial levels
last time – over 2 million years ago – when CO2 levels were this high, there was a fore
growing in Antarctica and sea levels were several feet higher than today.

File photo: Pixabay.

The Hong Kong Climate Action Plan 2030+ falls far short of the city’s potential to be a
leader in the fight against this crisis. While it recognises the certainty of climate chan
maps its impact on Hong Kong quite accurately, the actions planned – such as switchin
coal to natural gas and generating 3-4% of energy from renewable sources – are
underwhelming.

The vast potential for renewable energy is treated as unfeasible for some patently silly
reasons. For example, the vast water bodies that could be used for floating solar pane
considered out of bounds, being reserved for public recreation.

A major flaw of the report is its calculation of per capita emissions, which are under-
estimated by a factor of 2 to 3. It disregards all the emissions due to the outside produ
of Hong Kong’s imports. It ignores food consumption patterns, which in Hong Kong ar

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implementing ambitious plans such as converting its entire fleet of buses to electric.

Photo: Alex Hofford.

Hong Kong has ambitious plans to keep its economy growing and to also address the a
housing shortage. One is to create a new large artificial island: the east Lantau metro
project. This is estimated to cost 50 to 100 billion US dollars depending on the sea lev
it has to be fortified against. It shows the kind of resources Hong Kong can mobilise a
kind of solutions it can think of when faced with a challenge.

A similar approach to the climate crisis can easily pave the way to global acclaim for H
Kong. It’s time we declared a climate emergency, following in the footsteps of Scotlan
Wales, Ireland and England as well as 528 councils covering 52 million people around
world.

Only by treating the climate crisis as an emergency, and involving people – as opposed
corporate interests – can the world move towards a more equitable and sustainable m
for future survival.

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Kong Tsung-gan‘s new collection of essays – narrative, journalistic, documentary,

analytical, polemical, and philosophical – trace the fast-paced, often bewildering
developments in Hong Kong since the 2014 Umbrella Movement. As Long As There
Resistance, There Is Hope is available exclusively through HKFP with a min. HK$2
donation. Thanks to the kindness of the author, 100 per cent of your payment will g
HKFP’s critical 2019 #PressForFreedom Funding Drive.

#climate action plan 2030+ #Climate Change #Extinction Rebellion

Alibaba faces complaints

in Europe, as consumer
rights groups flag illegal
practices
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Comparing Hong Kong’s

extradition bill with other
international, law-abiding
agreements is misleading

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HKFP Contributor

Dhanada Kanta Mishra

Dhanada Mishra has a Ph.D. in civil

engineering from the University of
Michigan and is a professor in
India. He is currently visiting the
Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology as a Research
Scholar. He has a strong
professional interest in climate
science as well as a personal
interest in activism against climate
change. He has published regularly
in leading newspapers in India both
in his mother tongue Odiya and
nationally in English. He is a
founding member of Extinction
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Rebellion in Hong Kong.

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