dynamco Aug 24th 2013
11:15pm
the current ENB was handed a bucket of airborne shxt by Edward Yau and Bowtie & are trying to pick up the shambles they inherited
New laws on waste were promised in nice reports, producer responsibility laws by 2006, waste charging laws by 2007 but, no action talk only. Thankyou Edward Yau – hope you enjoyed your 59 overseas trips in 60 months’ employment.
Pollution kills. Check the Hedley index. Our major polluter is shipping. Yau did nothing about this.
This is the worst form of Misconduct in Public Office when they had a magic wand to do as they wished & backroom gophers who would change to the right tack at a whim.
They could have banned the import of bunker fuel with high sulphur content, they could have moved PRD to form a shipping Emissions Control Zone in our waters.
They did SFA,
Yau was awarded for his dereliction of office with a Gong & a mayoral office manager job at ten times the normal business rate.
Interesting watching Yau and the CE in New York recently – I wonder if they asked Mayor Bloomberg why his current waste disposal tender specifically excludes Mass Burn incineration which Yau promoted here, when he was not jet-setting first class overseas.
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Tomboy11 Aug 24th 2013
9:40am
A couple I know had a baby less than two weeks ago. Three days ago that child was put in intensive care with bronchitis, not coincidentally when the recent batch of air pollution from the north was reaching its worst. He is still in the ICU. I am sick of our government telling us it is alright to expose our lungs to this toxic mess.
Saturday, 24 August, 2013, 12:00am
Business
LAI SEE
Howard Winn
The ghastly air pollution which has descended over Hong Kong this week is a reminder of what remains a pressing problem for the city.
Every year we enjoy a period when the prevailing wind switches from the northeast to the southwest, and if it is strong enough keeps the foul toxic air at bay. This year we have mercifully enjoyed a more extended period of clear skies. It started in late May rather than the normal early to mid-June and this has been accompanied by winds that have been sufficiently strong to keep the atmospheric pollution at bay. We have now reached the time of year when that will change. The clearer skies we have enjoyed have masked, at least to the naked eye, our continuing problem of unacceptably high levels of roadside pollution.
The government to its credit, after years of neglect by previous administrations, intends to introduce proposals to eliminate vehicles with old diesel engines and measure and control emissions from other vehicles. But these proposals have yet to be introduced into the Legislative Council.
Meanwhile, large numbers of people are dying unnecessarily as a result of the toxic conditions in which we live. According to the Hedley Environmental Index, there have been 1,875 avoidable deaths so far this year because of air pollution. The index shows that over the past five years there have been an average of 3,200 avoidable deaths a year as a result of Hong Kong’s filthy air. As we have remarked before, if we were told that bird flu would cause 3,200 deaths over the next 12 months there would be panic and the government would move a lot faster to implement solutions. This is an urgent problem.
Source URL (retrieved on Aug 24th 2013, 9:45pm): http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1299062/urgent-action-needed-combat-hong-kongs-killer-air