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Taiwan tops emissions ranking

Taiwan ranks first in the world, among countries with a population of 10 million or more, in the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions, the director of the Research Center for Environmental Change at Academia Sinica said yesterday.

"As of 2005, [Taiwan's] growth rate was over 110 percent since 1990, the base year of the Kyoto Protocol," Shaw C. Liu (劉紹臣) said in the legislature's Science, technology and Information committee.

Liu was asked by the committee to brief legislators on the general situation of the country's carbon-dioxide emissions and to offer suggestions for countermeasures.

Legislators were largely uninterested in the topic, with only three of them attending the discussion.

The meeting lasted about one hour.

Liu told the committee that the country had gained a certain "notoriety" in the international community because of the significant increase in carbon dioxide emissions and the government's inaction on the problem.

Each person in Taiwan generated an average of 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005, four times higher than the global average, he said.

"That figure is likely to increase in next few years," he said.

Liu said the trend in Taiwan was "terrifying," especially in light of Japan's success in cutting emissions, as have some Western European countries.

Liu attributed the problem to "much too low energy prices" in Taiwan.

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chiu Chuang-chin (邱創進) was very receptive to the coments.

Economic affairs officials, however, were not as pleased.

Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-hsiang (施顏祥), who also attended the meeting, said the decision to raise the price of energy was a "highly political issue."

"Electricity and oil prices in Taiwan are lower than in other Asian countries ... but we can't propose a price increase until we have reached consensus," Shih said.

Responding to Shih, Chiu said that economic affairs officials should have dismissed the myth that cheap energy prices will lead to economic growth.

"It's the ministry's call [to come up with plan to combat global warming], but the ministry can't shake off its outdated way of thinking -- to encourage Petrochemical and steel factories -- that would produce great quantities of carbon dioxide emissions," Chiu said.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ye Fang-hsiung (葉芳雄) asked officials to educate the public about the importance of energy conservation "in layman's terms."

The ministry said that for every 10oC raise in room temperature in a household, about 6.2kg of carbon dioxide is produced. But "the term 6.2kg of carbon dioxide emissions might not mean anything to the public," Ye said.

"It's better to show how many trees would die from the increase. We have to allow the public to identify with the issue," he said.
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