3 December 2006

On most hazy autumn mornings, the extent of our air pollution crisis in Hong Kong seems so dense and choking that there seems no hope in sight. Last Monday was such a morning.

But I am not referring to the usual smog enveloping Victoria Harbour that made a solution seem so far away that day. It was the words of our Chief Executive when he rose to speak at a conference called Business For Clean Air.

Mr Tsang's speech came days after Merrill Lynch downgraded two Hong Kong property companies because of our air quality, and less than a week after the head of the stock exchange warned that pollution is driving investors away.

So how did the chief executive respond? He said we should keep the problem in perspective. Our air may not be as pristine as the North and South poles, he said, but it is on a par with cities like Barcelona, and our life expectancy is among the world's highest.

His conclusion was not that we are facing a crisis but rather that Hong Kong is in fact one of the most environmentally friendly places for people to live. Some may fret over pollution but foreign investment continues to pour into our city, he reminded us.

In the time it took to deliver that speech, Mr Tsang succeeded in making me believe that our pollution crisis may be much more critical than we previously thought because the government is simply not taking it seriously enough.

The intervening days have demonstrated that I am not the only person who was troubled by the chief executive's remarks.

Allan Zeman, the chairman of Ocean Park, reacted by asking which city Mr Tsang has been living in and described pollution as the biggest problem facing Hong Kong.

Anthony Hedley, the academic involved in research which indicated four people a day may be dying in Hong Kong because of pollution-related illnesses, called the chief executive's comments on our life expectancy "naive, misleading and fallacious".

We in the Liberal Party have for the past two years been gravely concerned about the state of our city's air and the failure to come up with concrete solutions.

In December 2004, and again in December 2005, I put motions forward in the legislative council urging the government to do more to tackle the pollution that has worsened dramatically in the past decade.

In February last year I led a Liberal Party delegation to meet Guangdong officials where we discussed at length how we can cooperate to improve the region's air quality. In March that year, I initiated a proposal to the national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing to work together to improve air quality in the Pearl River Delta. The Liberal Party's Sophie Leung also raised the same issue directly at the plenary session of the National People's Congress.

We may be a party that represents the business sector but the issue of air pollution, as we have seen from the mounting concern across all sectors in recent months, is one that transcends party lines and business interests. It is an issue that profoundly affects every one of us.

It is all very well for our Chief Executive to quote statistics on life expectancy in our prosperous, well-fed city but as we all know, it is only in the past 10 years that pollution levels have climbed to such alarming levels.

Shall we expect our people to compare our air quality today versus that of 20 years ago, or shall we, as he suggested, compare us to Shanghai and Beijing today? Can he really be confident that, if pollution continues to worsen, he will be able to promise the same life expectancy for our children and for our grandchildren?

Ronald Arculli, chairman of the stock exchange and an executive councillor , does not appear to share that confidence. He said in an interview with the Financial Times a fortnight ago that his two young grandchildren had been sent to live in the Philippines on the advice of doctors because of the state of Hong Kong's air.

There are already signs that we are paying the price of pollution with our health.

Research by Mr Hedley and other academics from three Hong Kong universities earlier this year indicated that 1,600 people a year are dying of pollution-related illnesses, costing Hong Kong 2.6 billion US dollars in lost productivity and health care costs.

In our efforts to promote the fight for cleaner air in Hong Kong, we have concentrated on negotiations with mainland officials because more than 80 per cent of our pollution comes from Guangdong.

It is vital that we work closely with Guangdong officials to reduce emissions but we believe our government has so far been too shy of offending our mainland neighbours to take up this challenge with sufficient vigour.

Our government must take much tougher actions against the problem of power generation companies and diesel trucks in Hong Kong contributing to the smog. Measure to get older vehicles off our roads must be enacted speedily, and pollution controls should and must be part of the Scheme of Control negotiations between the government and our two power companies.

A failure to properly address these issues, and to address them quickly, will have dire consequences for us all. It is not only an environment issue. It is a health issue, a lifestyle issue, a tourism issue, a business issue, and increasingly a political issue.

Mr Tsang's challenger in the chief executive election, Alan Leong, wants Hong Kong to adopt new standards of air quality announced by the World Health Organisation. We support his appeal but Mr Tsang so far has been silent on the matter.

Hong Kong's pollution crisis is worsening day by day. So is the clamour for more to be done about it. It isn't something that a stiff breeze or a few airy words about perspective, economic success and life expectancy is going to blow away.

We want to see the chief executive seize the initiative, to treat our pollution issue as an absolute priority and live up to his policy address promise to take "decisive measures" to improve the quality of our air.

In that policy address, Mr Tsang told us: "Hong Kong deserves and can afford a better living environment today. We must secure sustainable development for our future generations and take the lead in addressing regional environmental issues."

However, last Monday, he gave the worrying impression of stepping back from those promises. I truly hope that Mr Tsang can demonstrate to us through his actions in the months ahead that his desire to tackle pollution is genuine.

If he fails to do so, the smog that hovers over our city is certain to overshadow his re-election campaign.