Wilson Lau New Media

vincent-4-apri.mp3 

Vincent’s topic for the final project of this course is to do with how seriously global warming has affected Hong Kong for the past 10 years. He wants to look at the issue through several aspects: households, businesses, NGOs and government. Just a brief discussion with him of his project’s core ideas has prompted me to think about my own situation at home and ask myself “have I done my part towards protection of the environment?” If you also want to know how well you’ve been doing, check out the relevant posts in his blog!

Vincent’s undergraduate degree is geography at Baptist University and he has always paid close attention to the environmental issues in Hong Kong as well as other places around the world. In fact, his Master’s project also explores issues related to climate changes.

He started with the editing and updating of the page Hong Kong climate change in wikipedia. So far he has had success with getting information from government departments and he has been establishing contacts with NGOs.

Hong Kong has become warmer. A recent news report in SCMP said that winter in Hong Kong will disappear altogether in 100 years. A bit alarming but there is sound scientific basis to this sort of projection. With globalisation, Hong Kong’s climate changes are closely related to other places in the region.  Part of the Hong Kong’s problem is traceable to the heavy industrialization and total of lack of government regulations in Guangdong Province.  In part this is attributable to the lack of determination on the part of the central government to address the issue.  But why Guangdong is so popular as an offshoring and outsourcing centre? This is thanks to the insatiable appetite to buy cheap things among the Amercian consumers.

It has almost become daily news that the air quality in Hong Kong has become so unbearable, if left untackled, there would be long-term economic damage to the city. We have heard that overseas businesses have begun to consider setting up regional headquarters or relocating their executives to other cities in the Southeast Asian region because of the pollution problem.

Here is a brief MP3 file of Vincent’s reflection of the work on his New Media final project.