Living Smart

II ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY 074 075 There is a huge opportunity in developing new models and business practices that could provide important strategic advantage now and in the long term. My previous co-authored research has pointed out that achieving sustainable consumption and production in urban settings requires profound systemic changes and transitions. It is important to involve non-traditional stakeholders that are generally not included in urban planning processes, such as consumer organizations, retailers and supermarkets to advocate for more sustainable consumption behavior. A change of norms, rules (both formal and informal), laws, policies and governance systems should go hand in hand to make this work. I’m optimistic that Hong Kong can make strides in transforming its economy into a sustainable one. There is tremendous energy at the ground level to support innovative, sustainable businesses and community projects. We can start undertaking small-scale initiatives that experiment with social organization and sustainable lifestyles. The city’ s economy is focused on finance, logistics and retail services. Hong Kong can transition into a cleaner society through relatively less costly, more adaptable changes in business practices and consumption behaviors. It can strive to be a model and incubator of technologies and initiatives that will become engines of large-scale social change. Published on July 31, 2019 HK set for worst of it amid climate change Prof. IM Eun Soon Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Division of Environment and Sustainability T his month, we experienced the hottest day of the year as temperatures in Hong Kong reached 35.1 degrees Celsius. Countries across Western Europe also struggled in record- breaking temperatures recently, with France hit the worst at 45.9 degrees in June. The grim situation appears to have been a repeat of last year’ s conditions. Although there are ongoing in-depth analyses and further studies to examine the causes of individual extreme temperature events, many experts believe that extreme heat waves would not be feasible without anthropogenic climate change, meaning human activities are the main culprit for global warming ravages. Such an assumption has been proven by climate models – a complex computer simulation of physical processes and mathematical formulae used mainly to predict climate and understand how the climate system responds to elevated greenhouse gas emissions. These models provide robust projections that indicate the length, frequency and intensity of heat waves will increase over most land areas. Once considered uncommon, heat waves could become the new norm if average global temperatures keep rising. More specifically, simulations using state-of-the-art climate models forecast that the unprecedented extreme summer Korea experienced in 2018 could emerge annually should we not keep