Hk Third Runway Expansion- in the Economist's Point of View

As supporters of the environment, we strongly believe that a third runway expansion in the Hong Kong International Airport will cause a significant amount of damage to the environment in many ways. The building process of the third runway extension will involve a lot of land reclamation that causes a lot of noise and water pollution that will harm humans and animals’ ecosystems, especially the habitat of the Chinese Pink Dolphins. We understand that a third runway may provide Hong Kong with economic benefits, but the losses in our environment would total to a greater amount, which could possibly result to a greater concern in the long run. First of all, we environmentalist would like to state that the airport covers 12.48km square, and the third runway will increase around 50% of the existing airport, reclaiming another 6.5 sq.km of the ocean. There are already two parallel (3,800m×60m)runways existing in the Hong Kong International Airport, and we believe a third runway is not necessary. According to world ranks, Hong Kong International Airport is the fourth busiest Air Hub worldwide, 750 airplanes landing and taking off each day, more than 48.6 million passengers each year and transports over 3.6 million tons every year already, expecting 420,000 flight movements, 74 million trips, and 6 million tonnes of cargo by the time of 2030, which means almost double the amount of its work now. We believe that trying to transport even more cargo and people to earn more money -with the third runway, we would be increase the capacity and expectation by another third, transporting 8.9million tonnes of cargo, accommodating 97 million trips, and 602,000 flight movements per year-is a pure act of greed, and it would also strain us both environmentally and economically, wasting large amounts of money on an unnecessary third runway. As mentioned above, the addition of a third runway would cause a lot of strains with the environment- the 6.5 sq.km third runway will indeed