More than 85 percent of Taiwanese are willing to pay higher electricity prices to support development of renewable energy, a survey released yesterday showed.
The poll, conducted by National Taiwan University’s Risk Society and Policy Research Center, also showed that 68 percent supported energy and environmental taxes.
In the survey gauging public attitudes toward climate change, 67.9 percent of respondents said it was a severe problem facing the world.
However, only 39.1 percent felt the government had clear policies to address the issue, and 68.9 percent thought it should be more active in combating the problem.
On the impact of climate change policies on the economy, 72 percent of respondents did not think that environmental protection efforts would hinder economic development, while 43.4 percent believed it would.
Nearly 40 percent said they have personally taken action against climate change; 86.9 percent thought they should contribute to protecting the environment for the good of the next generation and 66.5 percent supported a restructuring of the nation’s high energy-consumption, high-pollution industries, the survey found.
The survey shows that the public sees climate change as an important issue and is willing to make greater efforts to protect the environment to ensure environmental sustainability and combat climate change for the good of the next generation, center director Chou Kuei-tien (周桂田) said.
Chou called for a more transparent policymaking process and more cooperation between the public and private sectors.
The survey was conducted from Nov. 5 to Nov. 13 and collected 1,071 valid samples through a telephone poll. It had a confidence level of 95 percent, and a margin of error of plus or minus-2.93 percentage points.
It was released following the conclusion of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris earlier this month, the center said.
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:
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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