With the Kyoto Protocol due to take effect today, a coalition of environmental groups staged a nude demonstration outside the Executive Yuan yesterday to protest against what they called the government's ignorance of the pact.
Chanting "protect the earth, save the climate," six male university and graduate students shocked the media by taking off their underwear, leaving their private parts covered only by a piece of paper and their buttocks, by a long strip of paper.
PHOTO:GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
On their backs were painted characters in black ink, reading "opposing No. 8 Naphtha Cracker and steel mill."
Before putting on the show, the coalition engaged in verbal bickering with security guards, who said they were violating the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法) and that they might risk offending public decency.
One protester, a sophomore from a college in Yunlin who wished to be identified only as "student Wu," said that although it was the first time he took his clothes off in public, he did not regret doing it.
"It's worthwhile if we get a positive response from the government," he said. "Besides, it's too late to regret it now."
Chang Tzu-chien (張子見), acting director of the Yunlin chapter of the Wild Bird Society and the coalition's spokesman, said that they used their bare bodies to mock the government's empty promises and to expose the government's lies as akin to those in the story about the emperor's new clothes.
"It's such audacity for the government to walk about nude and tell us that it's wearing beautiful clothes," he said.
Chang was referring to former premier Yu Shyi-kun's last-minute approval of two construction projects before he stepped down as premier at the beginning of this month, when he was also talking about sustainable development.
The two construction projects are the steel refinery of the Formosa Plastics Corp in Yunlin County and Chinese Petroleum Corp's No. 8 Naphtha Cracker in Pingtung County.
According to Chang, the two facilities combined are expected to increase the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 51 million tonnes, or about 25 percent more than the 2000 figure.
Taiwan ranks 22nd globally in greenhouse gas emissions, releasing over 2.17 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air each year, or about 1 percent of the global total.
The figure represents a 97 percent increase from 1990.
Chang said that they were enraged by the government's turning a deaf ear to environmental groups' calls and lying to them with beautiful and empty slogans.
"If the government continues to ignore sustainable development, we'll not only lose our global rating but also our competitiveness," he said.
Although Taiwan is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, Chang said that he expected to see the country play a more proactive role in the international community, instead of becoming an "environmental rascal."
In addition to calling on the government to respond to the pact, the coalition appealed for legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a halt to the construction of reservoirs on offshore islands and a reexamination of the two construction projects, the No. 8 Naphtha Cracker and steel refinery.
The group also asked the government to fulfill its promise of achieving a nuclear-free homeland.
The chairman of the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Yeh Chun-jung (葉俊榮), who is the executive officer of the Cabinet's task force set up to respond to the Kyoto Protocol, said that he agreed to enact a law to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and emphasize the importance of renewable energy.
According to Yeh, about 97 percent of the nation's energy is imported. The government hopes to see renewable energy take up 10 percent of the total by 2012.
In addition, the government hopes to increase the efficiency of energy usage and change the structure of the energy industry.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: