Hong Kong’s protesters should reserve some fury for bigger problems: the climate crisis and our mountain of waste
- Dozens of countries have set the goal of ‘net zero carbon’ by 2050, though how they will achieve this is far from clear
- They are ahead of Hong Kong, though, which has yet to turn its attention to a task that will require changes from all of us
When, one day soon, all physical evidence of anti-China protesters wrecking Hong Kong’s MTR stations, university campuses, ATMs and Starbucks has vanished; when all their raw anguish over a future as part of China has cooled, if not calmed; when Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is long gone, replaced by a new leader forlornly juggling local public opinion and imperatives from Beijing; then the crisis of all crises will remain, unaddressed and unresolved.
My editors at The Post discourage me from writing about the coming climate crisis, because their big data tells them no one is interested. I continue to write, in the hope that this will change, and that we, too, will soon join the rest of the world in paying urgent attention to moving towards a sustainable future.
As award-winning environmental journalist Pilita Clark wrote recently in The Financial Times, even though 60 countries have promised to get to “net zero” by 2050, or are actively considering such a promise, most governments remain clueless about how we get there.
