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Climate experts are optimistic

Effective reporting and more publicity on climate change would help the battle against global warming, experts said yesterday at a Climate Change Symposium held by the British Trade and Cultural Office (BTCO) in Taipei.

The BTCO organized the seminar to coincide with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) currently being held in Bali, Indonesia, a BTCO spokesman said.

He said the office would like to take the opportunity to establish ties with the government's Environmental Protection Administration and the nation's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as environmental issues played an important role in the British government's diplomatic policy.

Addressing the occasion, Alex Palman, the climate change consultant at the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who developed and implemented Britain's Climate Change Communications Initiative (CCCI), said that creating fear in the public was not the right strategy for educating people about climate change. He said individuals should remain positive on the issue and understand that everyone could contribute to mitigating global warming by changing their behavior and way of life.

Palman gave two successful examples of CCCI campaigns, including the television documentaries My CO2 and Climate Change Champions, both of which he said could serve as models for Taiwan.

The first documentary shows how the general public can help on climate change simply by switching off unused electrical devices or walking instead of driving the car, while the latter shows a project that brought together schools, community groups, NGOs as well as central and local governments to create competitions for youngsters on taking anti-global warming action.

Fiona Harvey, a journalist on environmental issues and a correspondent for the Financial Times, said allowing the public to visualize the issues -- such as flooding occurring more frequently in the UK, or dengue fever spreading north in Taiwan because of warmer temperatures -- was a good way of targeting the issue.

The media should avoid "sensationalizing" its reports -- making them "scary reading" -- because too much pessimism was likely to make people give up making an effort to address the issue or cause them to wonder about its credibility, she said.

"There is optimism as well as gloom," she said, adding that focusing on solutions and empowering people by showing how they could help was more important.
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