Thread by @joshuawongcf

[Climate change & HK - China is reacting similarly to both]

1/ @GretaThunberg was named #TIMEPOY by the @TIME. She's a Swedish Schoolgirl that inspired #FridaysForFuture against climate change. She's regarded as the figure of the power of youth, and inspired many, including me.

2/ I applaud for her statement “We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow.” There is a future where Greta and I will live long enough to see, and we are responsible to shape it into a desirable one.

3/ When world cheer & appalled for youth standing up against threats of climate change or dictatorship, we actually all play a role in the fights. No man is an island. We 're all living here today, and we will be living here tmr as well. It's not only up to the youngsters.

4/ Some people are respectable because they indeed did something great and conquered the limitations of humanity— being selfless, leading an Europe-wide climate change campaign, sacrificing their future and even their lived for the sake of fundamental human rights.

5/ These figures hope to encourage more people to do the same to really address the issues. It is not up to a few people to resolve problems that requires collective effort.

6/ Climate Change and the fight for democracy in HK share some similarities. Both of them cannot be resolved simply by the handwork of one place, and China has to be held responsible for both issues, and China’s response to them appears to be similar as well.

7/ Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the largest in the world. It is found by scientific research that global warming cannot be kept below 2 °C unless the emission of greenhouse gas in China falls sharply.

8/ China emitted over 12 gigatonnes (Gt) CO2eq of greenhouse gases and makes up almost 30% of the world total. And in 2018-2019, the emissions shows an increasing trend, contrary to the promise China made in the Copenhagen Accord and Paris Agreement.

9/ However, when China were asked publicly about this, its response is simply “China is a developing countries and it is in desperate needs of economic development”. This clearly shows China does not take the pledge it made in the global arena as promises it has to fulfil.

10/ China made a Joint-Declaration together with Britain before Handover of HK to promised “1Country2System” and universal suffrage for HK in 1984. It is bounded Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which is an international agreement governing treaties between states.

11/ Now it is clear that China is unwilling to keep its promise, and worse still, China has recently declared the Joint-Declaration to be invalid on its own. The Joint-Declaration was a historical document that no longer had any practical significance, China said.

12/ The two examples illustrate that China is never trustworthy and do not take any rules into consideration. It will simply do anything it wants, no matter what are the norms and regulations that it should follow. It takes more than just the youth to address the problem.

13/ Greta & participants of the strike alone can never hold China responsible for breaking its promise. HK’s youth along can never hold China responsible for violating international treaties. The world has to stand in solidarity to be able to achieve results.

14/ @GretaThunberg, let's forces China to comply to the norms that all players in the world ought to, for environmental justice and freedom that we all cherish.

welt.de/politik/auslan…