Air pollution should not be politicized, nor attributed to a single factor, the campaign office of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday after a Greenpeace Taiwan report said that the “climate action” of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidates was “not up to standard.”
Tsai and Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), KMT’s presidential candidate, laid out their climate and energy polices in a survey Greenpeace sent them last month, with their scores based on their responses and speeches they have made regarding the issue, the group told a news conference in Taipei.
People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) was not included in the assessment, because his candidacy was announced too late, it said.
Greenpeace energy director Tang An (唐安) said that candidates were judged on their goals to reduce carbon emissions, bring about energy transformation and install climate governance.
Tsai, who is seeking re-election for the DPP, was given a “C-” grade, while Han got a “D-,” the group said in a report.
For carbon reduction, the campaigns of both of the major parties failed to propose goals consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s guidelines, which state that global temperature rise should be kept at within 1.5°C of preindustrial levels, Tang said.
Little attention was paid to equity and justice for the social economy and the environment during an energy transformation, she said.
Tsai campaign spokesman Liao Tai-hsiang (廖泰翔) said that attributing air pollution to a single factor is an act of political manipulation, as a combination of causes contributes to it.
Highlighting domestic pollution sources while ignoring overseas factors, or citing power plant emissions without counting the contributions from traffic would prevent problems from being solved, Liao said.
Energy transformation and green energy development promoted by the DPP are fundamental solutions to cutting carbon emissions, he said.
Han campaign spokeswoman Huang Man-hsin (黃曼昕) said that the main principles of Han’s climate policy were legality, integrity, reform and international connections.
Before groups grade an environmental policy, a thorough review would be necessary, not an interpretation based on a fragmented analysis, Huang said.
After an increase in electricity generated from burning coal and natural gas under the DDP administration, the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions last year increased by 8 percent from the benchmark year of 2005, she said.
If elected on Jan. 11, Han would drastically lower carbon dioxide emissions by incorporating renewable and nuclear sources in the nation’s energy mix, she said.
Han will also abide by the Paris Agreement and roll out regulations on carbon inventories, labeling, trading, taxation and budgeting to catch up with global trends, she 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