Letters | Before Lantau Tomorrow, Hong Kong today needs to measure carbon footprint of artificial islands
- The UN panel on climate change has urged the international community to triple efforts to reduce carbon emission and limit global warming
- The Hong Kong government does not seem to have considered the carbon footprint of its Lantau artificial islands plan
Despite its potential to provide more housing in the long term, we believe that the Hong Kong government should not push forward with the reclamation project without carefully and quantitatively assessing the carbon footprint of building the artificial islands.
Otherwise, global warming of 2 degrees Celsius will lead to more droughts, floods and other types of disastrous weather, causing tremendous economic losses and unbearable human suffering.
Nevertheless, in response to our inquiry, the Development Bureau only promised to assess the environmental impact of the reclamation project under the Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance but fell short of specifically addressing the issue of carbon emission.
Therefore, we urge the Hong Kong government and its consulting firms to calculate the total carbon emissions of the reclamation project and to assess the project’s impact on the carbon intensity of the city’s economy, before moving forward with the “Lantau Tomorrow” plan.
Minsi Liu and Simon Wang, Kowloon Tong