The heads of the nation's five branches of government, as well as top business executives, were invited to watch the premiere of ±2°C (±2°C ─ 台灣必須面對的真相), a documentary on climate change in Taiwan, at the Butterfly Pavilion in Taipei last night.
TV commentator Sisy Chen (陳文茜), the producer of the film, said she hoped that those who watched the film would write letters to the Presidential Office and ask the chief executive to list climate change as a national security issue.
Chen said she had seen several documentaries on climate change, including An Inconvenient Truth by former US vice president Al Gore and Home by Luc Besson. None of these films, however, mentioned the impact of climate change on Taiwan.
“Don't take that as a cue that Taiwan is exempt from its influence. In fact, people in Taiwan might become the first group of victims of global climate change,” Chen said.
“Many people know that countries like Maldives might sink sooner than other places around the world, but few know that what may happen to the Maldives could also happen to Taiwan one day,” Chen said, adding that some locations in Taiwan might soon be underwater should temperatures and sea levels continue rising.
The film's name came from the consensus reached at the Copenhagen Summit last year, which was to take actions to keep any temperature increases below 2°C, she said.
Emphasizing that the film is a non-profit project, Chen said only wanted to use the film to educate the next generation about the issues surrounding climate change.
Any TV station can broadcast the film free of charge, she said.
Chen said she would also work with local governments so that the film could be shown nationwide. The film runs about 70 minutes and examines the issue of climate change from the natural disasters that have occurred around the world in the past six months to the scientific research and eventually focus on problems on the home front.
The production of the film began after the devastation caused by Typhoon Morakot last August.
An estimated 2 million people are expected to see the film, she said.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS