Worth the bother?
Well it's official - "Lights Out Hong Kong" failed to live to its expectations... d'uh.I remember when the first news of this campaign reared its head months ago.
Everyone was so estatic at the idea of a blacked-out Hong Kong.
But after watching the live feeds at the studio, "Lights Out" was a worthy albeit doomed-to-failure attempt in my view from the start.
If it had worked and a significant number of lights did go off particularly on the harbour, I'd say it would've even been worthy of global news coverage.
My initial pessimistic view almost came immediately when I first saw the posters around:
Hong Kong people - by that I mean most middle class and lower locals - don't care for such events that would cause even the slightest inconvenience.
HK's a 'night-ghost' and it needs light to feed its nocturnal nature! Businesses were the biggest obstacle as some were afraid due to insurance reasons, loss of business and just simple ignorance. At 8pm, it must've been bustling anyway and I don't believe the organisers were that naive to ignore that.
The marketing was all wrong and all too weak. First off, they didn't have TV ads - the best medium. And to be honest it's all a bit too gimicky for me. Not to mention it probably wouldn't have made the slightest dent towards the government. Oh and the event organiser, what's his name Alistair something, is a gweilo who's appeard numerous times on TV. For that I turned into my localised perception mode and chuffed at him: "Who the hell is this gweilo thinking he can tell me what to do? You don't even speak our language, we've got businesses to run, things to shop for!" Generalised stereotyping I know, but try and prove me wrong eh?
I hope future organisers learn from this lesson and getting around (and understanding) local people's attitudes of apathy is the key to successful campaigns. That means it has to be something not too inconvenient, doesn't affect their shopping and gluttonic addictions and costs them nothing.
Wow, good luck.
But look here, the source of most (if not all) this smog is coming from those heavy industries from Guandong. China needs cheap (therefore pollutive) factories and industrial production capacity to fuel its monstrous growth and compete overseas.
It's a big fucking exhaust pipe that's blowing past HK.
Taking it out on the SAR government or Donald Tsang is merely a stage before several more bureaucratic obstacles - namely the Communist Party. Do you think the commies really care about HK's air pollution problem? They're already pissed off that the Falun Gong are given freedom here to practice and more importantly to stage rallies.
Face it: it's a lost cause people.
We should focus on treatable problems like reducing litter, better recycling facilities and invest more in health care.
The real people who can help curb the air pollution coming from China are the engineers that are working on cleaner production machinery and environmentally friendly work ethics that hopefully will become cheap and affordable for the masses.
posted by Ed @ 12:31 AM
Comments: 1
