To make the nation more adaptable to the effects of climate change, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday announced its first funding project for research on climate change mitigation.
While the agency has previously subsidized projects for energy conservation and carbon reduction, this is its first funding project for climate action research in line with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act (溫室氣體減量及管理法) promulgated in 2015, Department of Environmental Management Director-General Yuan Shaw-ying (袁紹英) said.
The project aims to improve public awareness about climate-related issues and foster cross-disciplinary collaboration on environmental protection, especially after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last month called for faster efforts to stem global warming, the agency said.
Since climate change is a multifaceted issue, the agency encourages researchers of various disciplines to team up and propose plans that can be carried out in people’s daily lives, Yuan said.
However, applicants for basic research projects should seek funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology, which has a consortium for climate change studies, Yuan added.
As the EPA has limited funding for the program — about NT$15 million (US$485,405) for all projects next year — researchers are advised to seek additional subsidies from the ministry or the Ministry of Education, he said.
Approved proposals would be announced in the middle of next year, Yuan added.
In related news, the department is working with the Pingtung County Government to promote plastic garbage reduction on Siaoliouciou (小琉球), an island that has been designated by the EPA as a demonstration site for low-carbon and plastic-free life.
To encourage tourists to bring their own cups, the department has installed 10 water dispensers across the island with counters that display the number of plastic bottles saved, it said.
Since the dispensers were opened to the pubic last month, they have saved more than 10,000 600ml plastic bottles, it 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