Hong Kong has been contributing to the current climate crisis due to extensive industrial activity in the past and wasteful as well as carbon-intense ways of living until today. We emit 2/1000 of the world’s total greenhouse gas – twice the world’s per capita average – despite having only 1/1000 of the world’s population. As a developed and wealthy city, it is appropriate that Hong Kong adopts the IPCC recommendations for emission reduction targets for developed nations (25-40%) sufficient to keep below a 2 degree rise in global temperature, by setting its own target of 25% by 2020, from 1990 levels.

To achieve the above targets requires collective efforts from our citizens. A 25% reduction equals to about 18 million tonnes of emissions. Hong Kong’s per capita carbon emission is 6.7 tonnes per year (excluding aviation and food), and if each of us reduce 10% of our basic carbon footprint, we can aggregate a saving of 2.8 million tonnes of emissions by such actions alone! Let’s act together to make this collective carbon reduction efforts rocks!