On the eve of World Environment Day, environmental groups yesterday staged a demonstration urging the president to rethink the nation’s nuclear power policy.
The Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU), together with 13 civic environmental groups and legislators, gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei with yellow banners that read: “I love Taiwan, not nuclear disasters.”
They said that World Environment Day was set up to remind people to pursue economic development and improvement in quality of life under the premise that the environment cannot be sacrificed.
The nation’s unchanged nuclear power policy is in contrast with the government’s promotion of World Environment Day, TEPU secretary-general Lee Cho-han (李卓翰) said, adding that nuclear power harms the environment and departs from the goals of sustainable development.
They protested against prolonging the life of the nation’s three operating nuclear power plants and the construction of a fourth plant. They also called for all nuclear power plants to be thoroughly re-evaluated and shut down immediately if they fail to pass safety inspections.
“According to the weekly journal Nature, Taiwan has two nuclear power plants with more than 3 million people living within a 30km radius ... and if a level-seven nuclear crisis were to happen in Taiwan, it would destroy the nation,” said Wang To-far (王塗發), an economics professor at National Taipei University.
Wang said that while Germany has decided to shut down all its nuclear plants by 2022 and other nations are reconsidering their nuclear policy, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should do the same.
Wild at Heart Legal Defense Foundation chairman Robin Winkler said the Ma administration was irresponsible, as it was afraid of offending businesses on World Environment Day.
If the government will not stand up to protect the people, then the people will have to find ways by themselves, he said.
Coinciding with World Environment Day, the Environmental Education Act (環境教育法) comes into force today.
The law, passed last year, obligates the central and local governments to set up environmental education funds and establish authentication systems for environmental education agencies, personnel and facilities.
Staff at government branches of all levels, including the president and the premier, and employees of state-run enterprises are required to take four hours of environmental protection classes each year.
People who disobey the law could be fined at least NT$5,000 or forced to shut down operations and take up to eight hours of environmental education lessons.
To celebrate World Environment Day, the Environmental Protection Administration is inviting the public to log on to its “EcoLife” Web site (http://ecolife.epa.gov.tw), which offers tips on how to save electricity, reduce carbon emissions and other information on environmental protection.
A series of activities promoting environmental awareness will also take place nationwide today, includes beach clean-ups, lectures, second-hand book sales, eco-friendly markets, as well as hiking in Miaoli County and a film display at the Wugu Wetland Ecological Park education center.
For details of the activities, visit the official Web sites of the local governments.
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
RSS