More than 1 million people have pledged to help cut carbon emissions by temporarily becoming vegetarian, which would reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by at least 1.5 million tonnes annually, a green group said yesterday.
The announcement came after some 1.2 million people — including Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), Environmental Protection Administration Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏), Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) — signed on to become vegetarians during an anti-global warming drive held by the Union of NoMeatNoHeat between April 22 and Monday.
The union of more than 50 local groups promotes vegetarianism and is urging the government to build a “vegetarian-friendly” environment.
Union spokesman Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲), who is also the secretary-general of the Green Party Taiwan, said cows and goats produce large amounts of methane, one of the six greenhouse gases, during and after digestion.
The feeding, processing and transporting of animals also contributes to global warming, Pan said.
Pan said that 20 percent of the world’s carbon emissions are created by the livestock industry, which is more than the 15 percent to 18 percent produced by all the vehicles in the world.
Pan said that if one person eats only vegetables for one day, an estimated 4.1kg of carbon emissions can be avoided.
If one persists for a whole year, an estimated 1.5 tonnes of carbon emissions can be averted, Pan said. In other words, the more than 1 million people who have signed up for the campaign can help cut carbon emissions by 1.5 million tonnes annually.
Adopting a vegetarian diet cuts carbon emissions more effectively than removing one’s suit jacket, Pan said, referring to a government effort to encourage civil servants to wear less clothing as part of its eco-friendliness plan.
For instance, he said, if people in air-conditioned rooms all take off their suit jackets and raise the air conditioner setting 1°C, 300 million kilowatt-hours of electricity could be saved in one summer.
That is equivalent to a reduction of 207,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, while 1 million people eating vegetarian can cut 375,000 tonnes of carbon emissions in one summer, Pan said.
Nevertheless, Pan said that these carbon-reducing efforts would be easily negated if the government approved the construction of a controversial Formosa Plastics Group steel plant.
The project is undergoing an environmental impact assessment and if approved, the steel plant would generate up to 15 million tonnes of carbon, Pan said.
The government should not urge local citizens to save energy while allowing big enterprises to waste energy, Pan said.
Cheng Hsiao-hsuan (鄭秀娟), CEO of the Union’s secretariat, suggested that Formosa Plastics Group set up 20,000 to 30,000 sites nationwide to provide vegetarian food at low prices to 10 million people.
Cheng said Formosa Plastics Group could also offer vegetarian diet courses to raise public awareness about environmental protection.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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