Gesturing at the yellow smog shrouding the skyline, Kim Salkeld, Deputy Secretary of the Planning, Environment and Lands Bureau, suggests a partial solution.
Find out whether visibility would improve if one element in that soup was removed, even though other gases and chemicals - which float in from Shenzhen's factories and react with diesel fumes - were left hanging in the air.
The idea seems to illustrate the Government's approach to environmental problems: summed up as 'end-of-pipe solutions' by one academic - dealing with the effects, rather than the causes, of pollution.
The environment and quality of life obviously are linked to those of southern China; that area's business boom, population increase and urbanisation affect the whole region. And as more mainlanders become owners of vehicles, which meet only 20-year-old emissions standards, the Hong Kong scenario looks likely to worsen.
Mr Salkeld readily admits the quality of life will not improve significantly without massive structural, institutional and economic changes. The emphasis must move from pollution control to environmental quality.
But apart from creating a new bureau to oversee environmental matters, and dismantling urban and regional councils in the hope of streamlining waste management and small-scale reforms, questions remain about exactly what will be done. It is not clear if the Government has an overall vision about the environmental future, or when the community might see results.
Last year, toxic red-tide algae regularly closed beaches, pesticide-laced food contributed to health scares, and the dismal state of recycling and waste management was highlighted when a major paper recycler closed. People became aware of just what kind of air they breathe in direct relationship to a rising pollution index.