Heavy clouds floating over Hong Kong from the mainland may be a sign of good times ahead writes Mark Douglas.

Good news. Pollution in Hong Kong is on the rise. That sting in your eye should bring a song to your heart. The constant brown fug is actually a silver lining.
As the smog haze keeps rolling in, the economic storm clouds are being pushed out – or at least that’s the reported view of Goldman Sachs Asia Chief Economist Michael Buchanan. He has been literally sniffing the winds of change and likes what he can no longer see. The rise in Hong Kong’s infamous smog is, for him, “reassuringly bad”. The significant plunge in pollution levels during the first quarter of 2009 as factories shut down or reduced activity has successfully been reversed. Now the smog is returning to the Fragrant Harbour like the swallows to Capistrano.
Cloudy, but fine, is the economic pronouncement as both neighbouring Guangdong and Hong Kong itself move back into the factory-fuelled gloom while moving out of the darkness cast by the global financial crisis.
Pollution in Hong Kong is a big issue. Like the rest of the world, this dense metropolis is coming to terms with how to return to growth and prosperity while protecting the planet and its population from the pending dire consequences of global warming. 
The Hong Kong SAR Government is not completely standing still on the matter of air pollution – indeed some of its harsher critics say it is actually moving backwards. It has, however, commissioned report after report into how bad things are and what it should or could do. 
Other reports by climate lobby groups suggest some 10,000 Hong Kongers die every year due to their life-long immersion in pollutants, with about half a million of us thinking about moving elsewhere because of it.
Almost daily, and with growing stridency, local media report the views of various interest groups for the need for rapid change – putting the fossil back into fossil fuels. 
As I write this column on a quiet Thursday, the South China Morning Post tells me that the Chairman of the World Wildlife Fund has advised the HK Government it “must do more to clean up” while the Chairperson of the Clean Air Network says, in a prominent column, the Government must devise a new policy that will focus “on reducing air pollution in ways that also slow global warming”. The true, and growing, impacts of decades of economic boom times which have shaped this city are largely unchallenged.
The Hong Kong Observatory is quite blunt on the subject, stating the steady increase in annual mean temperature (up almost 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1885) is due to global warming. By the end of this century, it is projected, if everything stays the same, to jump another 5 degrees. Winter in Hong Kong is now officially on the endangered list.
The silver lining in this particular cloud, similar to that observed by Mr Buchanan, is of course that as it gets warmer, people will use more air conditioning, thus increasing energy usage and the profitability of the very sector most responsible for the problem in the first place. Analysis by the Hong Kong Observatory concluded that “raising the ambient temperature by 1 degree Celsius would increase electricity consumption by 9.02 percent, 3.13 percent, and 2.64 percent in the domestic, commercial and industrial sectors respectively.”
Good news again Hong Kong. Get your shares in these utilities early – there are boom times ahead.
How valid Mr Buchanan’s patent “ecopollutionometer” is, remains to be seen. But it is at least as worthy as many other economic indicators of the past and, indeed, present. The Romans famously used to slice open various unfortunate beasts to look at their entrails for signs of doom or plenty.
Rupert Murdoch – back in the day when he still had media interests in Hong Kong – reportedly used to count ships on Hong Kong harbour to gauge the buoyancy of the economy. In the US, an increase in the alligator population is a sign the economy is going belly up, as is a drop in plastic surgery and a spike in on-line dating.
Now we have the “eco-pollutionometer” – a new gauge which is readily accessible to most of the upwardly mobile citizens of Hong Kong with their ever diminishing view of Victoria Harbour.
So is the Hong Kong “eco-pullutionometer” an accurate predictor of financial health? Looking out my window, at the View from the Peak, it is now clear that not seeing is believing. ■

*Mark Douglas is an Australian journalist and corporate media adviser based in Hong Kong. Contact the author at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it