Germany-based nonprofit organization Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe yesterday issued the results of its Climate Performance Index — a ranking of 58 nations based upon their commitment to environmental protection — in which Taiwan ranked 54th, with the nation’s climate policy marked as “very poor” by the report.
The index was announced to coincide with the ongoing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Lima which began on Monday last week and is scheduled to run through Friday, to highlight environmental protection.
Taking the form of a bar graph, the index showed Taiwan’s climate policy bar to be significantly shorter than that of China and South Korea.
The ranking starts from No. 4 because “no country is doing enough to prevent dangerous climate change,” organization officials said.
The data showed that Taiwan’s production capacity is relatively low and that it is not doing enough to develop renewable energy sources.
The nation scored 46.81 out of 100, and its performance was graded “very poor” in the annual report.
Among other Asian nations, South Korea was ranked 55th, while Japan and Singapore dropped from No. 50 and No. 48 to No. 53 and No. 50 respectively.
In comparison, China, albeit the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, accounting for 22.95 percent of global emissions, climbed from No. 48 to No. 46 due to its development of wind and solar energies, the report said.
China managed to cut emissions growth in its carbon-intensive infrastructure development industry by half — from 54 percent to 27 percent, the report said.
Denmark, the UK and Portugal fared the best in the index, taking 4th, 5th and 6th places respectively.
The rankings, conducted by a panel of 250 experts on climate change and representatives from international non-governmental organizations, graded nations by five criteria: carbon dioxide emissions, energy efficiency, the development of renewable energy, and the formulation of domestic and international policies to address climate change.
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