Is the EPA earning its keep?
What useless thing is the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) going to do next? I laughed with schadenfreude when six months ago they had a “crackdown” on scooter tailpipes that point upward, blowing carcinogenic smoke into the trailing drivers’ faces. Drivers could have seen “heavy fines” if they didn’t get their tailpipe adjusted to point ... downward. Great. That’s progress. Thanks, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
And are police ticketing violators or are grassroots groups supporting this initiative? Not that I see on my daily bicycle commute. What changed? I don’t support the death penalty, but I observe that the EPA’s policies are in effect driving their own children to an early death. Along with oil, Earth’s human life expectancy rates have hit a peak and are expected to crash over the next 15 years worldwide.
Now the EPA is announcing a “crackdown” on large noise-polluting motorbikes, according to a very forgiving Shelley Shan (“EPA to crack down next month on large motorbikes that cause noise pollution,” April 11, page 2). Why am I not surprised that the EPA is doing nothing about air pollution? No matter that Joanne Rosen contracted asthma and must flee Taiwan for safer air (Letters, April 6, page 8). I’ve been making the same plea to drivers for years to turn off their scooters at long lights.
According to the story, this noise pollution is caused by “bikers who gather or race,” and I myself have seen this phenomenon in person while on mountain biking trips, including zooming parades of imported Italian and German sports cars on provincial highways. With fond memories of having my own sports car in Taiwan, I would happily do the same thing, but I agree that motorists should make sure they’re not too loud.
Meanwhile, what is the EPA doing about garbage trucks? From my sixth-floor balcony, Fur Elise gets blasted at me for a full hour every evening, three times in my neighborhood. My measurements suggest that it’s 75 decibels (dB) inside my apartment and even if I turn my guitar amplifier up to 11, I still can’t drown that darn song out.
Standing next to it, my slow-moving local garbage truck pumps out more than 115dB, which is more than enough to deafen both the helpless children in nearby strollers and those in the womb.
Rosen is completely correct when she pleads that Taiwanese begin, finally, to wake up and take care of our precious children. Did you know that in the US, one out of five teenagers of college entry age is ... deaf?
According to Shan’s story, members of the public should report offending vehicles, and so I would encourage the public to send in the license plate numbers of their local garbage and recycling trucks to the EPA. When you live in any place in Taiwan for a week, how do you not know when it’s coming?
Finally, aren’t speeding motorcycles and racing sports cars on the provincial highways a matter for the police to deal with? This all begs the question: Does Taiwan have any CCTV cameras that are connected to electricity?
TORCH PRATT
Yonghe
In the past month, two important developments are poised to equip Taiwan with expanded capabilities to play foreign policy offense in an age where Taiwan’s diplomatic space is seriously constricted by a hegemonic Beijing. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led a delegation of Taiwan and US companies to the Philippines to promote trilateral economic cooperation between the three countries. Additionally, in the past two weeks, Taiwan has placed chip export controls on South Africa in an escalating standoff over the placing of its diplomatic mission in Pretoria, causing the South Africans to pause and ask for consultations to resolve
An altercation involving a 73-year-old woman and a younger person broke out on a Taipei MRT train last week, with videos of the incident going viral online, sparking wide discussions about the controversial priority seats and social norms. In the video, the elderly woman, surnamed Tseng (曾), approached a passenger in a priority seat and demanded that she get up, and after she refused, she swung her bag, hitting her on the knees and calves several times. In return, the commuter asked a nearby passenger to hold her bag, stood up and kicked Tseng, causing her to fall backward and
In December 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing and unleashed one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Over six weeks, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and women were raped on a scale that still defies comprehension. Across Asia, the Japanese occupation left deep scars. Singapore, Malaya, the Philippines and much of China endured terror, forced labor and massacres. My own grandfather was tortured by the Japanese in Singapore. His wife, traumatized beyond recovery, lived the rest of her life in silence and breakdown. These stories are real, not abstract history. Here is the irony: Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself once told visiting
When I reminded my 83-year-old mother on Wednesday that it was the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she replied: “Yes, it was the day when my family was broken.” That answer captures the paradox of modern China. To most Chinese in mainland China, Oct. 1 is a day of pride — a celebration of national strength, prosperity and global stature. However, on a deeper level, it is also a reminder to many of the families shattered, the freedoms extinguished and the lives sacrificed on the road here. Seventy-six years ago, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東)
RSS