With the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government facing a HK$100 billion ($12.9 billion) budget deficit this financial year and other economies around the world facing a similar plight, promises of a green economy delivering economic growth, jobs and wealth for all don’t ring true for many people. Visit Hong Kong’s shopping malls: Boarded up shops with notices saying “new shop coming soon” are now a common sight and some of these signs have been on display for more than two years.

Deficits and boarded up shops sometimes arise out of a power shift from national governance to global governance.

The green agenda has become a shopfront for global governance. This green agenda is supported by money and publicity from the United Nations and the private jet owning (or riding) class which includes Jeff Bezos, Al Gore, Bill Gates, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. Many of the world’s top 50 ranked universities receive funding from at least one of the aforementioned private jet owners. Philanthropy is now an established vehicle for buying the influence needed to implement the dystopian globalist green agenda. The saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune” is applicable.

As part of this green agenda, green groups in Hong Kong have lobbied successfully for a charge on plastic bags and a ban on plastic utensils supplied for consuming food and drink. The greens nearly succeeded in persuading the Hong Kong administration to enforce waste charging legislation. Fortunately, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu saw the light and halted it after a survey revealed as many as 80 percent of residents opposed the implementation of the waste charging program in August as scheduled. Had the administration carried out the survey prior to passing the legislation many taxpayer dollars could have been saved. It is time for the Hong Kong administration and other governments to listen to their own people rather than the powerful green lobbyists. Doing so would likely reveal more than 80 percent of all populations oppose the UN green agenda.

Starry Lee Wai-king, a Hong Kong legislator and a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, expressed concern that the waste charging scheme could “cause chaos”. Chaos is what the UN’s green foot soldiers are deployed to achieve. They aim to destroy national patriotic countries from within through the chaos they create and pave the way for a new form of global control once people have lost trust in their governments.

Charging one dollar for a plastic bag has resulted in a Thaler-type nudge for consumers to abandon local shops and buy online where goods often arrive wrapped in more plastic than the carrier bags shops previously provided without charging one dollar a penalty. Boarded-up shops and restaurants across Hong Kong need incentives to reopen, not more “green tape” and expense required to comply with the radical green agenda. As Hong Kong shops suffer, Jeff Bezos, a major sponsor of the green movement, profits from online shopping via his company, Amazon.

At the heart of the green movement is the fraudulent claim that carbon dioxide (C02) from human activity is the driver of catastrophic global warming. History shows it has been wetter and warmer in the past when C02 levels were both higher and lower than today. Carbon dioxide follows temperature, and it is the source of all food and produces more green via photosynthesis. Cutting down trees to make wooden forks, spoons and knives that don’t function reduces green for no good reason. All humans breathe C02, it is transparent, odorless, tasteless and is a mere 0.04 parts per million by volume of the atmosphere of which only 3 percent is produced by human activity. It is beyond ridiculous to believe such a small quantity of trace gas is the temperature control button for the whole of the planet while ignoring the relationship between Earth and the sun.

Those promoting the fraud do not live by what they preach and often jet around the world for luxury holidays or to attend climate conferences, and send their children overseas to be educated. Carbon traders make millions of dollars annually out of this fraud via opaque carbon taxes on every product, service, food item and journey traveled. Those pushing the fraud try to isolate and intimidate their critics by calling them “deniers” or using the false claim that “97 percent of scientists believe humans are causing catastrophic global warming”. However, even the Gates-sponsored Guardian newspaper in June 2014 was forced to admit the 97 percent claim was not remotely close to being true. Viscount Monckton put the figure at less than 1 percent of scientists supporting the claim.

Hong Kong’s leadership should abandon nonsensical green policies, wake up to the fraud being promoted and stop kidding itself that a green economy promises a brighter future for all. A good start for the administration would be to reverse recent legislation preventing food sellers from providing plastic knives, forks, spoons and straws to their customers. Green groups claim replacing these plastic utensils with ones made from paper and wood is good for the environment. Their claims do not stack up. Paper straws go soggy and often break inside a sealed drink causing the drink to be thrown away. Wooden cutlery does not function well and often breaks. Some five star hotels no longer provide bottled water in rooms leaving guests who arrive late at night without access to bottled water until the following day from a nearby shop. Depriving paying guests of bottled water in hotel rooms is a sure way to deter future visitors.

Prior to the plastic ban, retailers and consumers had decided plastic utensils provided the most resource efficient and, as an indirect result, the most environmentally friendly way of consuming takeaway food and drink. They were correct. The greens are wrong.

The author has a Ph.D, LL.M, and M.A, and was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1996. He is now a Hong Kong permanent resident.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.