A Rap on Hong Kong's Pollution
Hong Kong is afflicted by such heavy pollution -- much of it the byproduct of China's manufacturing south -- that twenty percent of residents have said they would leave if they could. Plus, pollution is estimated to cost the city HK$11 billion annually. But, like Beijing, the way the city measures that pollution, the Air Pollution Index, is outdated and lags way behind World Health Organization standards.
Greenpeace asked MC Yan, a popular Cantonese rapper, to challenge the Hong Kong government to come clean and correct on pollution. The gist, to paraphrase an older rapper, is that Hong Kong needs to check itself before it wrecks itself.On a side note, MC Yan helped the Graffiti Research Lab on their 2007 visit to the Special Administrative Region. The Lab uses lasers to do large-scale temporary graffiti, and when they handed their equipment to Yan, he did the "farthest tag" on record, from the Star Ferry to the Hong Kong Cultural Center.
Hip hop, sadly, is an all too uncommon style for dropping environmental knowledge. But there are some promising precedents: an eco rap by China's Green Beat on how using Beijing's public transit can win over the opposite sex and an awesome Dadaist meditation climate change by Dr. Octagon. Might this signal a new, less direct tactic for Greenpeace?
More on TreeHugger
Hong Kong Pollution
Protesting Smog, Hong Kong Dims Sum Lights
Twenty Percent of Hong Kong Residents Consider Fleeing Bad Air
Carrot and Stick Power: Hong Kong Energy Profits Linked to Pollution
A Picture is Worth... Hong Kong at Night