Although I have only been to Taiwan twice, I consider myself a friend of Taiwan and enjoy reading your newspaper online.
However, a recent headline in your newspaper ("Bush kills off hopes for G8 climate change plan," June 2, page 1) contributes to a false (and negative) impression about what my country is doing.
We have faults and we have made mistakes in foreign policy, but we are not insensitive to the environment or to global warming. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are committed to reducing greenhouse gases. Most of the non-nuclear clean air technology developed in the last 20 years came from the US.
For the most part, the European, Japanese and South Korean automobile industries have simply copied and deployed technology that was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Harvard.
US President George W. Bush's latest environmental initiative is an effort to get around old objections in the US Congress to provisions in the (now expiring) Kyoto Protocol so that the G8 countries may adopt standards that will actually be implemented. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should be praised for aggressively pursuing US efforts to limit greenhouse gases and reverse global warming.
Although one would not know it by listening to former US vice president Al Gore, the Kyoto Protocol was rejected during the Clinton administration as it would have forced the closure of critical US industries.
It is very easy for countries that do not have large industries to suggest that such factories be closed, but these are the same countries -- such as France -- that beg for help from the US at the first hint of a threat from their neighbors.
I am proud of what the US is doing for the environment and am confident that the solutions will come largely from US laboratories and industries.
Ralph Rocheteau
Miami, Florida
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