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
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