The Ministry of Education (MOE) yesterday said it expects universities to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 7 percent by 2015.
Vice Minister of Education Lin Tsung-ming (林聰明) told the Green University Conference in Taipei that the ministry had encouraged universities in Taiwan to incorporate environmental sustainability into their curriculum.
“[The ministry] also hopes to activate [a green university campaign], raise public awareness [of environmental protection] and influence the nation’s schools on all levels by selecting 13 local green universities,” Lin said.
Lin was referring to 13 local universities endorsing the Talloires Declaration to mark World Environment Day on June 4.
The declaration, which was launched by a group of 31 university leaders and international environmental experts from 15 countries in October 1990, is a document showing the commitment of higher education institutions to creating a sustainable environment and raising awareness about environmental protection.
The presidents of Chaoyang University of Technology, Ching Yun University, I-Shou University, National Chi Nan University, National Chung Cheng University, National Taiwan Normal University and seven other schools promised to become model green universities.
The latest statistics provided by the ministry showed that 21 national universities had cut their electricity consumption by between 1.09 percent and 13.75 percent between the 2007 academic and the last academic year.
TC Chang (張子超), executive secretary of the ministry’s Environmental Protection Division, said it was necessary for universities to fulfill their social responsibility by leading the nation to pursue environmental sustainability.
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