In Humanitarianism 2.0: New Ethics for the Climate Emergency, Mr. Hugo Slim suggests that if humanitarian organisations are able to meet challenges resulted from climate change negative impacts it is crucial to upgrade humanitarian ethics from decision making overwhelmingly dominated by human needs to a new paradigm, which equally emphasises both human needs and ecological needs. The author articulates the new ethics framework by discussing the essential ethic principles individually and proposing some specific revisions on the textual expression of the key principles. However, the author may underestimate the difficulties of upgrading humanitarian ethics, the lack of agency of nature and future generations, and the trade-offs of choosing priorities under constraints of time and resources. In addition, the shifting international geo-strategic relations since America turning right and the start of China-U.S. trade war in the late 2010s also presents an even bigger and more urgent challenge to a more productive future of humanitarian aids.

As a historian, Mr. Fressoz uses a variety of compelling evidence to demonstrate how difficult it is to change the energy mix in the global level, which is still dominated by fossil fuels. Though he does not prescribe any policy recommendations on improving the climate policy, Mr. Fressoz has done an excellent job in showing a long-awaited historic critiques on the evolution of climate and energy policy. The history of global energy use in the past two hundreds of years only makes the pioneering efforts by Germany and China in scaling up the use of renewable energy in the past twenty years a only footnote of energy reality of fossil fuels dominance. While the pressing demand for energy supply to power economic growth among developing countries keeps high, an energy future with all-consuming pathway may lock in. Shall we come back to a basic question? If the history of energy use does not show an energy transition trajectory, how can we revise the mainstream thoughts on climate change?

Hong Kong is a financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region and Guangdong province is a power house of manufacturing in China. Will the most developed area in the country, including Hong Kong and Guangdong, be able to apply its economic capacities to advance green development, especially green investment and low carbon energy growth? What can the policy practices in the region support the green growth scaling up across the country? The book review offers a balanced analysis of both the best practices in different sectors and lack of governance framework.