Taiwan is not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, which is likely to go into effect early next year. But the nation should soon establish specific goals to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to ensure its economic competitiveness, environmental groups said yesterday.
Yesterday, 69 groups held a press conference to remind the Executive Yuan of the importance of keeping Taiwan abreast of international trends and the fight against global warming. The groups urged the government to revise its out-of-date industrial policies, which have led to the continuous growth of emissions of greenhouse gases.
The Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce by 5.2 percent the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in one category of developed countries within the five-year period of 2008 to 2012. However, environmentalists said that it would be impossible for Taiwan to reach that goal.
Statistics from the Environmental Protection Administration show that in the energy sector, Taiwan's carbon dioxide emissions increased to 255 million tonnes last year from 113 tonnes in 1990.
"Our carbon dioxide emissions are still growing," said Mary Chen (
Chen also stressed the importance of informing the public about their responsibility to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Taiwan produces more carbon dioxide than all but 21 nations. For its size, Taiwan is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, environmentalists said. There are more than 15 million vehicles in Taiwan, which is home to 23 million people.
Chen Jiau-hua (
Wang To-far (
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift