Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether this government is serious about reducing Taiwan’s shamefully high level of carbon dioxide emissions.
When President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came to power almost 18 months ago, he made a lot of noise about the environment and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions — which in 2005 saw Taiwan ranked 22nd in the world.
Since then we have seen only grudging progress on the environmental front.
Admittedly, the government has set a national goal of cutting carbon emissions to 2000 levels by 2025, but it has yet to show it has the capacity or will to achieve this.
Another problem is that 2000’s emissions levels are way above the kind of levels that Taiwan should be achieving if it is to help avert dangerous climate change. Much more drastic cuts are required.
It took threats from a foreign company to pull out of the local market before the legislature managed to pass the long-delayed renewable energy act in June.
Then this week the Cabinet’s Tax Reform Committee finally looked as if it were moving things in the right direction with a proposal to introduce an incremental tax on energy sources and greenhouse gas emissions that would see the price of gasoline almost double within 10 years.
The government, however, immediately backtracked on the proposal after the predictable disapproving noises from politicians, industry and the public.
Taiwan must drastically cut its carbon-dioxide emissions, but Ma has missed the boat. A year ago, when his political capital was sky high, he could have gotten away with it, but now, with his popularity at rock bottom, any move to begin this levy in 2011 would be the final nail in his 2012 electoral coffin.
While the idea is fine in principle — electricity, gasoline and other emission-creating commodities have long been undervalued in this nation, leading to profligacy on a grand scale — such drastic measures need to be implemented by a government much earlier in its term to give the electorate time to get used to it.
It would be political suicide for any government to introduce such reforms during the second half of its term, a fact that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — not the civil servants who proposed the policy — needs to take into account.
Nevertheless, addressing such a monumental calamity as global warming will call for tough decisions and leaders may have to throw caution to the wind. This is something Ma and all those world leaders who will attend December’s Copenhagen climate conference need to bear in mind.
Studies such as the British government’s Stern Report in 2006 have shown that the economic cost of acting to prevent climate change now will be far lower than the cost of dealing with its consequences.
Continued GDP growth is all well and good, but has this government considered how Taiwan will cope if in a few decades large tracts of the heavily populated western plains are inundated by rising sea levels?
To solve this looming catastrophe, governments around the world, including Taiwan, need to take a long-term view of the problem and begin serious mitigation efforts now.
Worrying about short-term, selfish political considerations is no longer an option.
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