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SCMP Reporter

Roy Tang's cavalier dismissal, on behalf of the Director of Environmental Protection, of Christine Loh Kung-wai's reasoned and ethical arguments for improving our air quality  may be seen as a defining moment in the history of public health in Hong Kong ('Simply not so simple, September 28).

The government has now made it absolutely clear that  large-scale  disease and mortality in Hong Kong associated with air pollution can - and will - be traded off against an undisclosed political agenda.

There appears to be no way back from this blind alley, since the government increasingly uses the crude mechanisms of:

Misleading claims of recent air- quality improvement;

Deliberate misinterpretation of the World Health Organisation's advisory on air-quality guidelines; and

Dismissal of the huge weight of published evidence  on a causal link between pollution, disease and community costs.

One salient feature of the present impasse is that, unlike in most other areas of environmental health, there is no one in the relevant government departments with the appropriate expertise in public-health medicine and science to speak on this issue.

That may not be unintentional. Those with both the necessary experience and a public-health perspective are all in non-governmental organisations. It would now be difficult for them to take part in Mr Tang's 18-month 'consultancy study' without implicitly endorsing continued harm to the population's health.

Further consultations are redundant. All the evidence needed for radical and effective action has been available for a long time. What we really need is an independent inquiry  into the political decision-making  that has led us into an unsustainable environment.

WONG CHIT-MING, SARAH McGHEE and ANTHONY HEDLEY, Department of Community Medicine, University of Hong Kong

Off-the-shelf moats

A moat around the government complex is an excellent idea, but not at Tamar. Why build  one when they are readily available off the shelf in Hong Kong,  at no extra cost? The island of Tsz Kan Chau, off Lantau, is an ideal location for the new government building. The site is cheap, within easy reach of the airport and protected by a very large body of water.

PETER ROBERTSON, Sai Kung

Vested interests

I see Simon Patkin is back on the letters page,  this time citing US Senator James Inhofe to argue against man-made global warming ('Shrill alarmism', October 2).

CNN and other  news media have thoroughly refuted the scientifically unsupported claims in Senator Inhofe's recent diatribe. When the senator says that the US National Academy of Sciences believes  the famous 'hockey-stick' graph of rising temperatures is unsupportable, that is a lie. When he says the Arctic is getting cooler and the polar bears are thriving, that is a lie. He  ignores the massive scientific consensus on this topic, instead choosing reports from a small group of scientists and even a  novel  (Michael Crichton's State of Fear).

By the way, in his 2002 election campaign, Senator Inhofe accepted more than US$850,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industry, the second highest amount received by any Senate candidate.

If Mr Patkin is so quick to mention the 60 scientists who wrote to the Canadian prime minister about the Kyoto Protocol, why doesn't he also mention the 90 who wrote at the same time to say that the Canadian government isn't doing enough?

The facts are simple. There is an overwhelming consensus on man-made global warming.  Each and every person who has come out against this consensus has been proved to have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

The so-called sceptics are either in the direct or indirect employ of the oil and gas companies, and have as much credibility as scientists employed by the tobacco industry to insist that smoking is not bad for you.

STEVE SCHECHTER, Mid-Levels

Evidence of warming

Simon Patkin's accusations of 'Shrill alarmism' (October 2) reflect an increasingly aggressive right-wing view in the US that anyone who disagrees with the party line is either biased, un-American or both.

His selective evidence is telling. Would he perhaps consider the following - to use his term - 'biased' evidence?

On September 20, European scientists released a photograph dated August 2003 which shows the normally ice-bound North Pole-32 meteorological research station sitting beside open water;

Satellite images last month  showed dramatic openings - over an area larger than the British Isles - had appeared in the Arctic's perennial sea ice during late-summer storms.

Scientists say it is 'highly imaginable' that a ship could soon sail unhindered to the North Pole; and

The journal Science recently reported  year-round Arctic sea ice shrank by one-seventh between 2004 and last year.

Mr Patkin writes that US Senator James Inhofe blames left-wing media for biased reporting. This is the same senator who called the US Environmental Protection Agency a 'Gestapo bureaucracy'. This is the same senator who is involved in a lawsuit to suppress a scientific report on the possible effects of climate change in the US.

This is also the same senator who has received more oil and gas campaign contributions than any senator except John Cornyn of Texas.

The recent studies Mr Patkin refers to were partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

Mr Patkin seems to espouse the view of the American right that environmental activism is simply another movement targeting US infrastructure and unity.

American self-interest has never been more aggressively pursued than in recent years.

Biased? Alarmist? Who is the pot and who is the kettle here?

DAVE DEARMAN, Tuen Mun

Expiry date built in

A civics lesson may be in order for letter writer Alan Johnson,  who dismisses democracy because it produced US President George W. Bush ('Come down to Earth - and count your blessings', October 2).

Democracy never claimed to produce perfect leaders; indeed,  it was developed specifically because it accepts that all leaders are human, and  thus capable of demonstrating the worst in human behaviour. Democracy creates a system where the people can remove bad leaders from office via elections.

Yes, the US is still two years away from ridding itself of the disaster that is Mr Bush, but I ask Mr Johnson this: when another Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution or June 4 happens, how long will we  have to wait to be rid of the leaders responsible?

ANDREW McGRATH, Arlington, Virginia

Dictator behaviour

A letter denying your comprehensive report on the plight of the  people is to be expected from a dictatorship such as the Myanmar regime ('Posing as refugees', October 2). Daniel Pepper's story 'The dispossessed' (September 22)  confirms what the world knows about the long-time oppression of the country's minorities, the continuing suppression of all opposition  and the fact that money from foreign investors China, Russia, Japan and South Korea 'just goes to the military ... to repress the population as the regime sells off their national wealth', according to Human Rights Watch.

Hope lies in the fact that a majority in the UN Security Council has now agreed to hold further discussions on the threat the  Myanmar regime poses to regional peace and security. It's high time the world - and especially this vile regime's Asian neighbours - did more to shame it into finally becoming part of the civilised world.

ISABEL ESCODA, Lantau

The world's bandits

I was gladdened to read Adam Williams' appeal for an  impartial review of the United Nations speeches  of presidents Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,  presented by the  US-dominated media as villains ('Duty-bound to listen', October 2).

The US has always presented fabricated evidence and biased claims against foreign leaders who refuse to co-operate with it  (as shown in the lack of evidence that former Iraqi president  Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction). It has always denounced such leaders for allegedly  threatening  world peace.

At the same time, however, it supports  any ruthless dictator friendly to the US. This prolongs the suffering of the people in these countries, but the US just turns a blind eye to their plight.

The world's police are actually the world's bandits. Before slandering other leaders, the US government should do some serious reflecting  on how much trauma it causes people all over the world.

HARVEY CHEUNG, Sham Shui Po



So now you know:  health is a chip in some political game