K.Y. Cheng

A truck covered in black balloons was driven through Hong Kong Island and Kowloon yesterday to highlight lung damage caused by air pollution. It is part of a campaign by Clean Air Network, which claims more than 5,500 people have died as a result of air pollution in the past five years. The organisation has received 25,000 emails calling on the government to improve air quality. The petition has been passed on to Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau Tang-wah.

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CAN released the results of its parent survey last week at a press conference led by Dr. Alfred Tam, Chairman of the Hong Kong Asthma Society. For the first time, Chinese media wrote about air pollution as a health problem – a genuine breakthrough in the dialogue about this problem.  Some of the damning conclusions of the survey which was conducted in pediatricians’ clinics throughout Hong Kong were:

• 91% of parents think the current poor air quality threatens their children’s health
• 81%  found it more severe when compared to 3 years ago
• 31% of the parents surveyed had children with chronic coughs
• 96% think the government should spend more to clean up the air

Download the full powerpoint of findings and media news clips here.

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Mary Ann Benitez

One of Hong Kong’s leading authorities on air quality and public health is leaving the SAR to avoid its polluted air and help his respiratory problems.

Anthony Hedley, the chair professor of community medicine at the University of Hong Kong since 1988, has lived in the territory for more than 22 years.

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Peter Kammerer

Life has not been the same since my meeting on Friday with indoor air consultant George Woo. I had always thought of air pollution in terms of grey skies, cross-harbour visibility and diesel fumes. The roadside readings are bad today, so I must stay off the streets as much as possible, my subconscious would tell me. Horror of horrors: I just learned that sitting at an office desk – what most of us do for our working day – can be as bad, perhaps worse, for our health.

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Annemarie Evans

More than 200 companies in Hong Kong have launched the first business-led petition to urge the government to combat worsening air pollution.

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Singapore-born Joanne Ooi took a degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school before learning the garment business in China and becoming sales and marketing director for a French shoe designer. She later launched her own upmarket fashion boutiques in Hong Kong. She now runs a non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to improving air quality.

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Christine Loh

If  Hong Kong doesn’t get the “carrots and sticks” formula right, it will continue to be hard to replace the old and highly
polluting commercial diesel bus and truck fleet. There is no doubt about the harm these vehicles cause. Government data
shows they are the principal emitters of roadside pollution, accounting for 88 per cent of the highly health-damaging
particulates and 76 per cent of nitrogen dioxide, another pollutant.

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Editorial

Few things are more important than the community’s health. Yet the government seems to be more concerned with business reaction than with our well-being when it comes to roadside air pollution. It’s a problem that should be easy to tackle: it simply has to get off the streets the old commercial diesel buses and trucks that are mostly the reason for the poor readings. With yet another voluntary scheme having failed, it is time to get priorities right and get tough.

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The primary complaint, echoed again on Wednesday, has been that the amounts of the subsidy, respectively 12% and 18% for Euro I and II, are too small to function as a genuine financial inducement. Unfortunately, the current proposal is equally unenticing and offers an 18% subsidy only. It is rather obvious that, based on present experience, such a scheme’s carrot is simply too skimpy to alter behavior.

Thus, it is CAN’s position that the carrot needs to be fattened up considerably if we are to achieve EARLY replacement of dirty polluting vehicles. To match this rather paltry carrot, the Govt is proposing to increase license renewal fees slightly. Although the EPD was careful not to mention any dollar figure in the LegCo chamber, they had told us previously that any augmentation will be de minimis — something like an additional $500 per year per vehicle. Thus, the lame carrot will matched by an equally lame stick! Can there be any hope for ACCELERATED replacement of the oldest polluting vehicles with such a toothless set of measures?

In this regard, we certainly agree with the the transport industry: larger per vehicle subsidies would be much more effective. As opposed to other environmentalists, we have no issue with increasing payouts to polluters if it means getting their dirty vehicles off of our streets as soon as possible. Moreover, everyone can agree that it is a terrible use of taxpayer money to grant payments to truck owners to replace vehicles that were already going to be replaced because the vehicles had reached the natural end of their lifetime. No one, truck owner or public, could disagree with this characterization of the current subsidy scheme, which is an outrage in terms of its ineffectiveness.

So, at the very least, we hope the Government is not going to rewrite the errors of its present pre-Euro and Euro I scheme into its new Euro II subsidy plan.

If the per-vehicle subsidy was increased from 18% to 25-35%, for example, it would be fair for the Government to impose a tougher stick in the form of increased license fees. This point was aptly made by the transport industry itself during the LegCo session. At least, then, truckowners would be presented with a genuine choice: take advantage of the Government’s (generous) subsidy to buy a new truck or face substantially higher, penalizing licensing fees. In short, the juicier carrot would be accompanied by a stick of commensurate weight, addressing concerns of inequity from the transport industry itself.

During the session, there was also major discussion of a scrapping incentive. After all, argued the truck owners, getting the worst trucks off the streets is an important public health goal. We do agree. However, how do you address the problem of trucks that are about to fall apart anyway? Outside LegCo, the EPD told us that they were considering a compulsory scrapping scheme, which would, at least in theory, prevent cheating the system. Although we weren’t able to get into a detailed discussion with the EPD, presumably, such a scheme would necessitate the scrapping of a vehicle when it reached an age of, say, 20 years, with a cash payment for scrapping available for vehicles less than that age. The scrapping incentive would be biggest for the newest vehicles and dwindle in direct proportion to the age of the vehicle in order to fairly compensate vehicle owners for the unused lifetime of their trucks. THIS certainly seems like a fair scheme but, as usual, the devil is in the details. Obviously, the correct or incorrect calibration of the cash payment amount could significantly skew the scheme towards success or failure. The example of the present subsidy is instructive.

Annelise O’Connell of Mini Spotters may have proposed the best idea of all: mandatory dynamometer testing and elimination of the oldest vehicles. The method for “removal” could be either scrapping and/or subsidy. But the main point was the identification of the dirtiest vehicles to both optimize use of taxpayer money and reduce roadside emissions. Unfortunately, it appears that the EPD considers such a scheme impractical.

Wednesday’s discussion dealt primarily with the proposed Euro II subsidy, which is already fraught with major defects. But let’s not forget that the even thornier, more urgent problem of getting the oldest vehicles (pre-Euro and Euro I) off the road will remain, even if Euro II vehicles are subsidized more effectively than currently proposed.

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