Legislators urged the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday to forward a letter to the White House urging US President George W. Bush to reverse his decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol is a UN climate pact which requires major industrialized nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 emissions levels before 2012.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
On March 29, the US announced it had effectively abandoned the pact on the grounds that it does not force developing countries to curb emissions and because Bush said the plan is not in the economic interests of the US.
Bush's decision to kill the protocol angered not only many European countries but also developing countries as well.
Concerned about sustainable development on the planet, legislators from the Association of Sustainable Development (永續發展促進會) and environmentalists from the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (台灣環保聯盟) yesterday asked the AIT to forward a letter to Bush titled "Don't leave too much burden to our children."
Legislators, including independents Josephine Chu (
Concerning greenhouse gas emissions by various countries, "the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change does emphasize its principle of equal but differentiated responsibilities in regulation," Chu read from the letter at the AIT.
Although developing countries are not bound by the pact, the legislators said that those countries would eventually participate.
Taiwan, as a non-UN member, is not bound by the protocol. But, to avoid any economic sanctions by the international community, Taiwan has been mapping out its own policies in conjunction with international trends in global environmental protection over the last 10 years.
The beginning of such action was prompted in part by the 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international agreement controlling the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances, such as CFCs, which are used in refrigerators, aerosol propellants and solvents.
To shoulder the responsibilities of preserving natural re-sources with other countries for future generations, Taiwan decided in 1999 to reduce its total emissions of carbon dioxide to 297 million tonnes from an estimated 501 million tonnes by 2020.
Legislators said yesterday that they hoped that the US would come up with innovative strategies to shoulder the responsibility of protecting the planet rather than dismissing the Kyoto Protocol.
William Weinstein, chief of the AIT's economic section received the letter from the legislators. Wienstein however declined yesterday to speak to the media on the issue.
Officials at the AIT public relations office said that the letter would be forwarded as soon as possible to the White House through normal channels but they did not know how long the process would take.
The AIT had no other comment on the letter, explaining that it was addressed to the White House and not their office.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS