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
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