The Sunday feature of the Taipei Times ("Environmental Index puts Taiwan at bottom of the heap," Feb. 20, page 17) should have been the talk of the town among popular TV call-in programs and should have made responsible politicians resign in droves for shaming Taiwan.
However, this piece of bad news -- the worst ever for Taiwan -- was almost totally ignored or denied in public. For one thing, were it not for the special feature made by the Taipei Times, this news was not covered much in Chinese-language media.
For those who missed the article, a recount is in order. A highly regarded report on the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), issued by the Davos World Economic Forum last month, placed Taiwan at the bottom, or 145th of the 146 nations surveyed, ahead of only North Korea. Carried out by reputable Yale and Columbia Universities, the ESI generated a comprehensive quantitative overview, by integrating 76 data sets, of each country's environmental stewardship.
The ESI represented the performance of the past and present environmental policies in a country and forecast the likelihood that this country will preserve its environmental resources into the coming decades.
The placing of Taiwan, by ESI, on the rock bottom among all nations, is a news story bad enough that Winston Dang, a current first term legislator and a former US EPA official, felt that "The report should be heeded with humility because it has definite credibility."
In contrast, our government official from the Council for Economic Planning and Development characterized the report as "unfair" and "biased" against Taiwan. Such a response is the classic, bureaucratic one -- burying one's head in the ground and denying its existence, and blaming the messenger when the message is bad, by discrediting the source.
We should not only be concerned about the serious findings but also be appalled at the lack of publicity regarding news of such immense importance.
We know we have been breathing polluted air whenever we go outside, but we were not aware that it was that bad.
Every car owner in Taiwan has noticed that if you simply leave your car outdoors sitting for a couple of days, your windshield will collect a thick layer of dust so thick that it would make driving sometimes hazardous.
Imagine the dust that would be deposited in our lungs instead, if we worked outdoors or just took a "healthy" walk for a few hours every day.
Taiwan allows tens of millions of motorcycles to emit carcinogens and carbon monoxide, without requiring them to install a catalytic converter, which is required of every automobile.
No civilized nation in the world has citizens who own so many motorcycles, averaging one out of two persons in a country with a population of 23 million. Motorcycles are also a major safety menace, killing 5,000 lives a year and maiming fifty times more, and a major contributor to the air pollution level.
The seriousness of air pollution in Taiwan must be in part responsible for the skyrocketing increase in the number of lung cancer deaths in Taiwan -- nearly a 10-fold increase in the last 30 years. There were two lung cancer deaths a day in 1971; by 2001, we had twenty lung cancer deaths a day, every day of the year.
A cabinet-level agency was set up nearly twenty years ago in Taiwan to address the environmental issues, patterned after the US EPA, or Environmental Protection Agency. A slogan, "Blue sky, green river and clean air" was promoted and promised by our EPA at that time. For about the same time period, we have been asked to pay for gasoline with a hefty "air pollution tax" included in the gas price.
The tax was earmarked for cleaning up the air.
If we recall, Taiwan drove the Bayer pharmaceutical company out of Taiwan out of fear that Bayer's plan to set up a plant near Taichung County would pollute the environment. As a result, Bayer went elsewhere with thousands of job opportunities. Later, the Administration also tried hard to stop the nuclear power plant already in construction for fear of environmental hazards in 2000. It embroiled the whole nation in an uproar, pitting the pan-blues against the pan-greens.
The incumbent DPP party, affectionately called the Green Party, campaigned successfully in their advocacy role to protect and sustain the environment.
They have been in power for five years, have a coffer filled with billions of NT dollars collected every year and designated for reducing air pollution, and have never failed to make environmental goals as part of their campaign agenda. Yet when Taiwan got a failing mark on this report card on environmental quality, they looked the other way.
Where is the accountability of our policymakers? Too busy with internal squabbling? Too busy engaging in arranging cross-straight flights or the three links? These issues look petty and minor when compared with the environmental calamities at hand. Looking the other way is not only hurting the interests of this generation in terms of health, economy and quality of life, but also our offspring and their offspring for generations to come. Doesn't anyone care about Taiwan's future?
Taiwan is small and crowded, so we need to be more environmentally sensitive. We cannot afford assuming similar policies as countries that have vast territories of land to spare, where "The solution to pollution is dilution."
We need to set an over-riding principle: whenever there is a conflict between environmental safety and economy, economy should play second fiddle.
As a country that ranks high in GDP, it is time for Taiwan to invest in the environment. Max Woodworth, the Taipei Times staff reporter, should be highly commended for calling our attention to an important report that otherwise we would have missed.
We need to hear the truth, come what may, and be assured that remedial actions are forthcoming. Where Taiwan is ranked is inconsequential; the rankings are bad, bad, bad, no matter how one rationalizes them. Something drastic needs to be done, or else the Island of Formosa, once admired for its natural beauty and named as a "beautiful island," may become the place notoriously described as a "pig pen" by some past visitors.
In 2005, Taiwan is inviting tourists worldwide to visit. But who wants to visit a place ranked next to last, and where the people care least about their land and environment?
Wake up politicians, and apologize for your excesses.
Make a public commitment to reverse the course, or else we are all doomed.
Chi Pang-Wen
National Health Research Institutes, Taipei
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