The right to make statements like this without fear of deportation, or accusations of being a meddling foreigner, was part of what got Winkler, after more than 20 years as a foreigner, to give up his US passport for a Taiwanese one, in 2003.
It's a right he exercises in countless meetings, speaking to vast congregations or a single legislator in soft Mandarin, making a point of referring to "we Taiwanese."
He had romantic reasons for becoming Taiwanese as well. Having a US passport, and the ability to leave "if things get bad," is like being "in two places at once," and he wanted to be fully here, where he had spent half his life, built his career and met his wife, a Taiwanese-born publisher.
And, of course, there was Taiwan's environment, hectare for hectare one of the most diverse in the world. He had always loved it, down to the rain and humidity. When he first came to Taipei nearly 30 years ago, the capital's verdant surroundings were one of his chief reasons for staying.
Like the first Western environmentalists, Winkler is motivated by love. He believes that it is simply wrong to profit at the expense of the environment and the other beings that inhabit the Earth or future generations of inhabitants. He quotes the 2002 Basic Environment Act "almost like poetry":
"'Sustainable development' means satisfying contemporary needs without sacrificing the ability of future generations to satisfy their needs ... . In the event that economic, technological or social development has a seriously negative impact on the environment or there is concern of endangering the environment, the protection of the environment shall prevail."
Those words represent a victory of sorts, but after what he sees as the Democratic Progressive Party's neglect of its roots in the environmental movement, he doubts that any government can live up to them — at least not as long as business, in its current form, remains Taiwan's lifeline to the international community.
The opinion of the international community is no less dreary. Taiwan did terribly in Columbia and Yale universities' 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index, for example. One of the organizers admitted the ranking was probably harsh, but "where there's smoke, there's fire," Winkler said. And there is a lot of smoke in Taiwan. Of 146 countries surveyed, only North Korea fared worse.
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