Hong Kong to step up effort to make the city greener

While preparing my speech for tomorrow’s ecoDesign fair “What Sustainability Means to Me”, Julian Wong’s tweet from alerted me to the People’s Daily article Hong Kong to step up effort to make the city greener.

It was fortuitous timing as I was just in the section where that was to cover the common definitions of sustainability, and how I thought that these definitions were framing conversations that were misleading, and leading that solutions that are ultimately proving to be less than effective.

A point that this article helped me frame:

More electric cars, higher proportion of natural gas in power generation and replacement of less-energy efficient light bulbs are among the series of measures to be taken in the months to follow.

Now, don’t get me wrong, clean energy, cars, and light bulbs are great and the efforts of the city to negotiate with electronic cars firms to provide the 200 cars are noble, but are these really the most effective steps for a city whose buildings average a meat freezing 19 degree and has a government coordinated light show of all its buildings every night?

That, in the mantra of “carbon is evil”, we have come to develop circular programs that produce carbon, and then programs that “solve the problem”.