Ahead of tomorrow’s committee review of proposed amendments to the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣汙染防制法), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of “putting on a show” and not being serious about combating air pollution.
The KMT is opposed to the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ heavy-handed approach toward removing the limits on the amount of natural gas that can be used by power plants, the caucus told a news conference.
Emissions by state-run enterprises should be gradually reduced on a yearly basis and an “air pollution prevention fund” should be set up, the KMT added.
Citing Article 14 of the DPP’s proposed amendments, KMT caucus secretary-general Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀) said the government’s regulations on natural gas were too lax.
According to the draft article, power plants need not obtain permits or be subjected to an environmental impact assessment, which is counterproductive to fighting air pollution, Lee said.
The provision is difficult to swallow for environmentalists and ordinary people, as it is aimed at boosting the nation’s electricity generation capacity under the guise of combating air pollution, she said.
Lee also criticized the DPP for proposing a rule stating that the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) should consult the Ministry of Economic Affairs when formulating measures to tackle air pollution on days when the air quality hits dangerous levels.
The draft rule would make the EPA subordinate to the ministry and therefore undermine the act, Lee said.
State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) earlier this month said it ordered all coal-fired power plants nationwide to decrease their power output by 20 percent in response to severe air pollution, but the number was falsified, as it took into account power generators that were undergoing maintenance, KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
Excluding the power generators that were shut down when Taipower claimed to be lowering the power plants’ capacity, the actual amount of capacity reduction would total a mere 3 percent, Wang said.
The KMT caucus would propose a rule in its draft amendment that stipulates by how much power plants’ output should be reduced as an emergency measure to respond to dangerous levels of air pollution, she said.
The DPP said it would strive to reduce PM2.5 — airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter — but it has proposed expanding the Shenao coal-fired power plant in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳), KMT Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said.
“The DPP either has thick skin or thinks people are fools,” he 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:
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