Wednesday was Earth Day. Many environmental forums, camps, film festivals and beach clean-up activities were held by civic organizations in the hope that more people would show concern for our planet.
After all, Earth is our mother and when she is ill, we cannot afford to ignore it.
Prior to Earth Day, the government and the Bureau of Energy (能源局) organized a National Energy Conference with great fanfare, giving the impression that they were serious about energy and carbon emissions.
However, over two whole days, not a single mention was made of the most crucial factor in greenhouse gas emissions in Taiwan — industrial restructuring. The nation’s highest environmental official, the minister of the Environmental Protection Administration, was noticeably absent, thus failing to show that he was working to curb global warming and take a square look at climate change.
Nor was the finance minister anywhere in sight, as if the reform of the energy tax system was none of his concern.
The result of the conference was that many were left with the impression that nuclear power was the low-carbon energy of choice.
Taiwan may not be easy to find on a world map, but the country’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions ranked 22nd in the world in 2006.
Because Taiwan is not recognized as a country, it is temporarily exempt from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
However, when the signatories to the framework meet for the 15th time in Copenhagen in December to focus on more advanced developing countries and other “economic entities with high carbon emissions,” Taiwan will no longer be invisible.
Nichoas Stern, a former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, has said that global warming is not a natural occurrence: It is a man-made disaster and the most serious and urgent challenge humanity faces.
If we continue to let the government turn farmland that people rely on for their livelihoods into concrete deserts to develop high carbon-emission industries, if we continue to remain silent as the government allows power plants to expand their facilities year after year based on inflated power usage statistics, and if we continue to accept excessive logging and over-reliance on petrochemical products, Taiwan will not escape censure and international sanctions for its high pollution and carbon emissions, just as it will not escape the consequences of global warming.
Seeing the invasion of green-washed advertising on Earth Day, I wonder how we will be able to explain to our children what we have done. Earth Day should be a day to show our care for the planet. Will it become a day of grief?
Wang Min-ling is Mercy on the Earth, Taiwan’s deputy secretary-general.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan in late February. During their various meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, this delegation never missed an opportunity to emphasize the strength of their cross-party consensus on issues relating to Taiwan and China. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Their instruction upon taking the reins of the committee was to preserve China issues as a last bastion of bipartisanship in an otherwise deeply divided Washington. They have largely upheld their pledge. But in doing so, they have performed the
It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambition is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation by unification of Taiwan, either peacefully or by force. The peaceful option has virtually gone out of the window with the last presidential elections in Taiwan. Taiwanese, especially the youth, are resolved not to be part of China. With time, this resolve has grown politically stronger. It leaves China with reunification by force as the default option. Everyone tells me how and when mighty China would invade and overpower tiny Taiwan. However, I have rarely been told that Taiwan could be defended to
It should have been Maestro’s night. It is hard to envision a film more Oscar-friendly than Bradley Cooper’s exploration of the life and loves of famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. It was a prestige biopic, a longtime route to acting trophies and more (see Darkest Hour, Lincoln, and Milk). The film was a music biopic, a subgenre with an even richer history of award-winning films such as Ray, Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody. What is more, it was the passion project of cowriter, producer, director and actor Bradley Cooper. That is the kind of multitasking -for-his-art overachievement that Oscar
Chinese villages are being built in the disputed zone between Bhutan and China. Last month, Chinese settlers, holding photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), moved into their new homes on land that was not Xi’s to give. These residents are part of the Chinese government’s resettlement program, relocating Tibetan families into the territory China claims. China shares land borders with 15 countries and sea borders with eight, and is involved in many disputes. Land disputes include the ones with Bhutan (Doklam plateau), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin) and Nepal (near Dolakha and Solukhumbu districts). Maritime disputes in the South China