Disagreeing with Duffy
Like Gavan Duffy, I am a resident of Australia, living in your wonderful country. However, I take exception to his comments regarding nuclear power generation (Letters, Aug. 8, page 8). I am not against the concept, but I can not help but think of Japan’s experience and your recent typhoon, not to mention the active faults running through the island.
I also observe that Australia is fiercely opposed to nuclear power and has invested heavily in alternative forms of power generation with great success. In regard to Taiwan’s position vis a vis China, I fail to understand the comparison. China is becoming a world leader in “green” power.
If Taiwan wants to be more competitive, investment in green power, not nuclear, is the future.
Michael McNamara
Batemans Bay,
New South Wales
Renewables are the future
In a recent letter to the Taipei Times (Letters, Aug. 8, page 8), Gavan Duffy wrote: “I reside in Australia, where solar power and wind power has been extensively promoted and proved to be of great expense and little effect.”
However, he gives no facts to support this claim. The fact is that in 2013, Australia charged polluters AU$23 (US$17) per tonne of carbon they emit. Wind power still undercut fossil fuels even without that correction. So wind power is cheaper than fossil fuels.
Germany last year generated 74 percent of its energy from renewable sources.
Taiwan has earthquakes and typhoons. Those could cause nuclear disasters similar to the one at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.
No nukes! Nuclear energy and fossil fuels are dangerous, dirty and expensive. “Renewables” are the future.
Andres Chang
Taipei
Soong: ‘non-political’ exit
In his presidential campaign declaration: “Take this step to find an exit together,” People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) said that “Taiwan has the right to join non-political international and regional organizations to ascertain and sustain economic prosperity and stability.”
Soong, as an experienced politician running for president, should not make such a statement and completely deny the political parity of Taiwan in the world. He seems to be still living in the White Terror era, when the government said people had the freedom of speech except for in politics. He should find out why the UK changed its representative office in Taiwan from the British Trade and Cultural Office to the British Office.
If Soong’s statement that “cross-strait relations are an extension of the nationalistcommunist civil war” was true, China should summon all Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members to go back to China — where the war ended 66 years ago — for possible sentencing for war crimes and leave innocent Taiwanese alone.
Taiwan, the shelter for the defeated KMT, should not become a battlefield of an old Chinese civil war after two or three generations.
Before Soong said that “Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China [ROC] in 1945,” he should have read the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and the 1952 Taipei Treaty to find out the nation’s true status. A good politician should not be blind to history.
Soong was born in Hunan, China. He might be interested in the “struggle between the regimes of the People’s Republic of China and the ROC,” but Taiwanese are not.
Taiwanese might not feel comfortable when Soong calls them “hometown relatives.”
If “both shores are as intimate as a family” and “both shores belong to the descendants of [Chinese] Emperor Huang” as Soong says, why are the KMT and China so provocative toward Taiwanese?
Soong should read this letter as gold — not as mud!
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
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