President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that Taiwan cannot exclude itself from the global campaign to save the world, adding that the government aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels by 2020.
Although Taiwan is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol nor does it have an opportunity to participate in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Ma said the country was willing to unilaterally abide by the convention and had set goals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Before 2007, although Taiwan’s population represented only 0.3 of the global population, its greenhouse gas emissions accounted for nearly 1 percent, Ma said.
Taiwan’s ranking — 22nd in the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and 18th in emissions per capita — serves as a warning, Ma said.
He said the government had set a goal of cutting down carbon dioxide emissions to 2005 levels by 2020, 2000 levels by 2025 and half of 2000 levels by 2050.
Ma made the remarks while meeting Thomas Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, at the Presidential Office yesterday before Friedman delivered a speech to government officials at the Presidential Office.
Friedman said that although Taiwan is a tiny island with few natural resources but visited by many natural disasters, it is an expert in renewable energy because it has the most important renewable resource: people.
“They drill their people. They don't drill their ground,” he said. “When you drill people and you unlock their creativity, talent, knowledge, energy and entrepreneurship, you have the most important renewable resource in the world ... Now you have to use your renewable energy to really invent more renewable energy.”
When countries drill the ground and not their people, those countries tend to be authoritarian, he said, adding that when world oil prices go up, the pace of freedom in those countries goes down.
Citing his book Hot, Flat and Crowded, Friedman said the average global temperature had risen by almost 2ºC since the Industrial Revolution.
Flat is Friedman’s metaphor for a world in which more and more people can live a middle-class American lifestyle, have their jobs and drive their cars.
“I’m gonna tell you a secret. Don’t let anybody else know,” he said. “There are too many Americans in the world today.”
It is a blessing that so many people in the world can live like Americans, Friedman said, but “the good Lord did not design our planet for this many Americans.”
Crowded is the fact that there are 6.7 billion on the planet today, Friedman said, adding that according to the UN population projection, there will be 9.2 billion by 2050.
Friedman’s argument in his book was that hot, flat and crowded were like three separate flames that all came together around 2000 to create a huge fire and this fire is driving five global mega trends.
The five mega trends are: energy and natural resource supply and demand, geopolitics of energy use, climate change, energy poverty and biodiversity loss.
How the world meets these five trends will determine the stability or instability of the planet in the 21st century, he said.
Friedman also visited Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) later yesterday.
Government Information Office Deputy Minister Alice Wang (王麗珠), relaying their conversation to reporters afterwards, said Friedman was curious why Taiwan, which he said was regarded as one of the flashpoints in the world 13 years ago, could maintain peace with China over the years without much shuttle diplomacy and US intervention.
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