More than 80 percent of respondents agreed that candidates’ energy policies to deal with climate change would affect their vote in January’s presidential election, Greenpeace Taiwan said yesterday, citing the results of a survey it conducted.
Greenpeace Taiwan energy project campaign specialist Alynne Tsai (蔡篤慰) said that extreme weather events caused by climate change have been more frequently reported around the world in recent years and Taiwan is affected in many ways.
The survey showed that 93 percent of respondents agreed that climate change and extreme weather events have affected their daily lives, while 83 percent said that the presidential candidates’ energy policies for addressing climate change would affect their vote.
Photo courtesy of Greenpeace Taiwan
The global temperature increase has to be kept below 1.5°C and carbon dioxide emissions have to drop by about 45 percent before 2030 to meet the recommendations of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report published last year, Tsai said.
However, according to the EU Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, athe verage carbon dioxide emission per capita in Taiwan last year ranked No. 25 in the world, she said, adding that emissions in Taiwan are increasing by about 1.5 percent per year.
“People have already felt the effects of the climate crisis, but government officials and the presidential candidates’ policies to address the problems are mostly slogans or medium-term goals and lack practical steps to achieve them,” Tsai said.
As resources are invested into national defense, healthcare, infrastructure and other things, the government should also view the climate crisis as a threat to people’s lives, property and national security, she said, adding that the problems need to be addressed as soon as possible.
Greenpeace Taiwan yesterday presented a climate manifesto, urging the presidential candidates to announce long-term plans regarding sustainable energy development and carbon reduction that encourage local participation and maintain fairness.
Greenpeace Taiwan plans to send the manifesto to all of the presidential candidates, asking them to answer questions on energy policies to address climate change, with scores on their responses to be published on its Web site, Tsai said.
The survey was conducted through random telephone sampling and an online questionnaire, and 1,126 valid responses were collected from adults from Sept. 1 to Sept 9.
It has a margin of error of 2.92 percentage points.
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