Yesterday's policy address was like an unsatisfying meal - it contained nothing of substance. Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen first exhorted the government to 'focus on the overall strategic direction' and 'establish guiding principles' to clean up the environment. Then he promptly failed to articulate either a compelling strategy or convincing principles for doing so.
The speech showed a serious inability at the highest level of government to connect the dots. Mr Tsang knows full well how serious our air pollution is. But he still could not present us with a comprehensive management plan on air quality.
The reason may be that Mr Tsang still doesn't see the issue clearly. He said Hong Kong's first challenge was to 'sustain economic development'. To do that, however, we must embed environmental policies into that economic development.
If Mr Tsang truly understood this, he would presumably have connected an environmental upgrade with his economic plans. He could have asked his officers, for example, to start looking at how Hong Kong could set up a regional market for trading air pollution emissions credits. Or to examine the financial and environmental benefits of making our maritime and logistics sectors highly energy efficient.
He might have asked them to devise an energy policy to drive energy efficiency, so that the city as a whole could reduce costs and pollution.
Nor did Mr Tsang connect the need for cleaner air with Hong Kong's ability to retain global talent. In the past few months, an increasing number of media stories have said our air pollution is driving people away and discouraging others from locating here.
Another example of disconnection is Mr Tsang's call on the private sector to adopt 'green procurement' in their operations. But he did not use the government's vast procurement power to drive change - the area where he could have made the greatest impact in the short term.
