Hong Kong’s air pollution nightmare

Skyscrapers disappear behind smog as air pollution index hits record 500-points!

chinaworker.info

On March 22-23 Hong Kong’s air became poisonous. “Pollution level goes off the chart” was the main headline in the South China Morning Post. The air pollution index (API) reached record “severe” levels in Hong Kong and across Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta. Late on Monday, March 22, the API broke through the maximum level of 500 points at most measuring stations (10 of 14) throughout Hong Kong. By Tuesday, the level was still over 500 in five of these stations, dropping to “only” 300 points in the others. The concentration of small particulate matter, the most serious pollutant, was fifteen times the maximum recommended level set by the World Health Organisation. Hong Kong’s previous record API level was 201 recorded in 2004.

Readings of 100 or above are classified as “very high” with warnings that people who are sensitive to pollution should reduce outdoor activities. Anything above 200 is considered “severe,” and can lead to coughing, phlegm and sore throats, the New York Times reports.

A sandstorm originating in northern China blew down to Hong Kong, aggravating its habitual, chronic smog problem, which is caused by an excessive, old, and high-polluting vehicle fleet, mostly coal-driven power stations, and industrial blowback from Hong Kong-owned factories in the Delta region, dubbed the “factory of the world”.

The sandstorm, China’s worst in more than a year, has affected 270 million people across 16 provinces. Beijing was reportedly shrouded in a brownish haze of sand. The sandstorm was widely reported in the mainland China media and yet still the Hong Kong authorities were caught napping – failing to issue a severe pollution warning until 2am on Monday morning. Hong Kong’s air pollution was rated “very high” for four days before the weekend sandstorm.

Sandstorms from northern China are an increasingly common phenomenon in springtime. China Daily, the state-run English daily, reports there are now two dozen sandstorms a year, six times the number 50 years ago. They are a result of desertification caused by deforestation, overgrazing and global climate change. Despite government claims that desertification is being rolled back, scientists and meteorologists say the problem is worsening. Roughly one quarter of China’s territory is desert.

Stay indoors

An API reading of 100 is when health officials warn people with heart or respiratory conditions to stay indoors. With the reading recording five times this level – and unable to measure any higher – the Environmental Protection Department advised Hong Kong’s 7.2 million residents to avoid outdoor activities for a second day. But tell that to Hong Kong’s army of construction workers, street vendors and others who are forced to labour long hours outdoors often for rock-bottom wages. The government took no measures to compensate for or limit outdoor working. At least 120 people including an eight year-old were hospitalised and almost 2,000 elderly people were treated for breathing difficulties.

Organisers of Hong Kong’s Rugby Sevens tournament, which starts this week, said it was up to the visiting teams to decide whether to train. Prentice Koo of Greenpeace in Hong Kong told CNN he conducted an informal experiment where he blew cigarette smoke at a device equivalent to the API detector. From this informal experiment he calculated that the smoke from about half a cigarette is equivalent to breathing air that registers 500 on the API.

Greenpeace is critical of the Hong Kong government’s air pollution index, which is not as stringent as guidelines from the World Health Organization. The Hong Kong API measures concentrations of five pollutants including sulphur dioxide and lead. Although the method of measurement was reviewed in 2009, it is still widely criticised by environmentalists as too lax and outdated.

Government inaction

The government operates an early warning system for typhoons but seems incapable of enforcing a similar advanced warning system for extreme pollution. Hahn Chu Hon-keung of Friends of the Earth accused the government of neglecting the need for advance caution: “If the situation was known a day in advance, something could have been planned in the transport and power generation sectors to avoid worsening the pollution.” (South China Morning Post 23 March).

Koo of Greenpeace points out the high levels on the API were recorded at around 8pm on Sunday, “but it took the government until two in the morning to issue a warning.”

The government response verges on parody. Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau said at a press conference, “People can help in alleviating the situation by using public transport, switching off idling car engines, and reducing smoking.” He said power companies had been ordered to switch to cleaner fuel, but this takes a couple of days to take effect.

Yau said that pollution should return to a “regular level” of 70-120 by Wednesday 24 March. Yet while this is not toxic like today’s air, an index reading of more than 50 is defined as “high” and more than 100 is deemed “very high.”

Chief Executive Donald Tsang said in January that it was unacceptable that air quality had reached “dangerous” levels one in every eight days last year. Yet his government has taken no more than minimal, cosmetic steps to meet the crisis.

While it is workers and poor people who have least protection, even the rich are complaining over the pollution menace. “I’m concerned about the welfare of my children,” the president for Asia Pacific at FedEx Corp told Business Week. “And I’m concerned from a business standpoint because it’s becoming more and more difficult to recruit people because of Hong Kong’s air quality issues.”

Congested roads

The unelected Hong Kong government wants to blame the latest pollution shock on the sandstorm and “natural causes”, while in fact desertification and other factors behind China’s more frequent extreme weather phenomena are anything other than “natural”. This underlines the need for mass struggle to change the system and wrest control of economic development out of the hands of the “eco-wreckers” i.e. the alliance of capital and authoritarian state.

But Hong Kong-based think-tank Civic Exchange commented, “Even though the dust storms have created record levels of particulate emissions, we must not lose sight of the fact that roadside pollution remains the single biggest threat to public health in Hong Kong.”

The city’s traffic system is a disaster zone. Hong Kong has the highest vehicle density in the world, which is particularly ludicrous given its compact geographical area. Diesel trucks and buses are the biggest polluters on the roads, accounting for 88% of harmful particulates and 75% of nitrogen oxide, another pollutant. Around one third of the commercial bus and truck fleet – 38,500 vehicles out of 117,000 – that run on antiquated ‘pre-Euro’ or ‘Euro I’ engines account for 73% of particulate emissions.

Private companies that run the city’s widely deregulated bus system complain they lack funds to upgrade to cleaner models. These companies want government to foot the bill. Chinaworker.info says this is a good solution, but that these companies should be brought into public ownership, run democratically by the working class, and integrated into a rational planned system, with a big expansion of the underground MTR system as a key component, that can offer free travel and in this way curb excessive and damaging car use.

Likewise, Hong Kong’s energy sector is based primarily on coal, which is the cheapest but also the most harmful fossil fuel for the atmosphere and the climate. A shift to renewable clean fuels is needed, but for this to happen the grip of the money-grabbing capitalists must be broken through democratic public ownership of the energy sector. The same applies to property and construction, the motor of Hong Kong’s economy, but where frenzied speculation leads to overcrowded and environmentally damaging construction projects, with more and more high-rise buildings obliterating the remaining open spaces, so that pollution and heat are trapped in urban areas. A socialist and fully democratic transport, energy and urban planning policy is urgently needed to stop Hong Kong choking to death!

Chinaworker.info calls for:

• Immediate establishment of an advanced warning system for pollution threats

• A fully integrated and democratically run green public transport system. Privatisation and deregulation must be reversed, with the whole transport sector taken into public ownership. Free travel on public transport.

• Public ownership of the construction and property sectors under democratic workers’ control – for a shift to green and socialist urban planning to eliminate pollution traps and improve living conditions for the masses. For affordable housing and an end to wasteful luxury projects.

• Unity with mass environmental protests and workers’ struggles in mainland China and globally – for international socialism and environmental cooperation as the only solution to capitalism’s climate terror.