Investors who enthusiastically bought SpaceX’s IPO, making Elon Musk a trillionaire, have implicitly made a prediction about the future. The value of the company is 1.8 trillion dollars based on expectation that its AI business will have $322 billion in revenue by 2030 – which is a pretty impressive forecast, given that 2025 revenue was 100 times lower at $3.2 billion.
In other five-year forecasts, the World Meteorological Organization expects one of the next five years to break the record for the highest temperature on record; slightly less of an eyebrow-raising prediction, given that The past 11 years have also been the hottest on record and global temperatures seem to be heading in the same direction as those rockets.
Just as SpaceX engineers have a lot of work to do in the short term to really earn their yachts, humanity has a lot of work to do to avoid an endless string of increasingly inhospitable weather: carbon emissions must be. cut in half in the next five years. Actually, because it’s June, make that four and a half years; this is 10 percent of the track gone.
It’s not just climate scientists and rocket ship companies who plan five years ahead. China’s long-term planning method in five-year chunks has resulted in an economic miracle; and Hong Kong is now getting in on the act with a five-year plan of its own. There is one public consultationdeadline of August 14 for Hongkongers to contribute their thoughts on what they hope to see included in the plan.
In mine the last articleI had hoped that Hong Kong’s five-year plan would take a leaf out of China’s book and include sustainability considerations right at the heart of all decision-making. That doesn’t seem to have been done yet, but, well, we have until August 14th to ask politely.
As common as it is for a columnist to pontificate about AI, there is something we can learn from how corporations are thinking about AI. CEOs spend time, effort and capital building AI expertise and infrastructure, and making tough decisions about “lower value human capital.Predicting how AI will shake things up in the next five years isn’t just left for a nerd in an IT dungeon to ponder, but is seriously considered at the highest levels of corporate strategy. CEOs are busy making plans now to prevent competing robots from eating their lunch in five years.
Even though we have credible predictions that sea level rise will soon eat away at our coasts, sustainability still tends to be the domain of hippies in a sustainability dungeon (often, surprisingly, depending on a marketing department); and while some companies are doing better than others, it’s still common for CEOs to leave sustainability to the hippies instead of integrating it into their strategy work.
Looking at the public consultation document of Hong Kong’s five-year plan, this appears to be true of high-level decision-making in government as well; which is a particular shame given how well China’s five-year plans have incorporated sustainability.
The translation of Chinese Five Year Plan that I’m reading contains references to “green development” or other related terms in almost every chapter. For example, Chapter 31, Section 3, “工业游戏的人民城市” (“Building a Modern People’s City”), specifically mentions the need to “(p)omote green and low-carbon urban development”, as well as making references to sustainable construction and flood prevention.
In contrast, Hong Kong’s public consultation document chapter on the Northern Metropolis makes no mention of carbon reduction or flood adaptation at all. She says the word “green” twice, but without specifics as to what that means.
We have to go back to page 31 (of 37) to get a clue as to what is considered “green”. Fair enough, there is some good stuff out there. Zero carbon energy, green transport, circular economy, all important aspects of sustainability. The green living section even mentions “the integrated development of culture, sport and tourism, green transition and security governance as well key pillars for strengthening the city’s competitiveness and people’s sense of satisfaction” (emphasis added).
Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I see a contradiction in mentioning “integrated development” only in the twilight paragraphs of a document; the term “integrated” means to me something closer to how China’s five-year plan integrates sustainability into every strategic pillar. Perhaps this is part of the reason why China is so far ahead of the rest of the world in green technology – it’s a strategy, not an afterthought.
Hong Kong’s five-year plan has some great material, but takes it to a separate chapter. The problem with having it in a silo is that it often leads to different departments pulling in different directions; as the effort to decarbonize transport, while cancellation of electric car incentive schemes and diesel subsidy.
If anything, I hope that Hong Kong’s first five-year plan will be the catalyst to introduce sustainability into big-picture planning, as China’s national planning does. We have until August 14 to apply.
| HKFP is an unbiased platform and does not necessarily share the views of columnists or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views and regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Basic Law, the Security Law, the Bill of Rights and the Chinese Constitution. Opinions are intended to constructively point out errors or defects in government, law or policy, or are intended to suggest ideas or changes through legal means without the intention of hatred, resentment or hostility against other authorities or communities. |
