Monitor | The sheer wilful stupidity of official inaction on pollution
It would be far cheaper for the government to tackle air pollution now, rather than in a few decades when the health costs will be incalculable
This week's Audit Commission report on the effectiveness of the Hong Kong government's pollution policy makes depressing reading.
That is not so much because of the government's repeated failure to meet even its own modest environmental targets, although that's dismal enough.
No, the real reason the report is so discouraging is the sheer wilful official stupidity that lies behind the government's failure.
Back in the late 1980s, the government introduced targets for the maximum permissible concentrations of harmful atmospheric pollutants and set up the Environmental Protection Department to enforce them.
A quarter of a century later those targets look feeble compared with the latest international standards.
For example, the World Health Organisation's air quality guidelines recommend an annual average PM10 - that's cancer-causing diesel soot to you and me - concentration of no more than 20 microgrammes per cubic metre.