Environmental Protection Administration officials and environment ministers from seven Central American countries met at this year's Environment Ministerial Meeting, which ended on Oct. 19. In the future, Taiwan's public and private sectors will become actively involved in various business opportunities aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the clean development mechanism carried out by the UN Environment Program Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean.
At first glance, Taiwan seems to be a role model for environmental protection. Although for political reasons the nation is unable to become a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, the Taiwanese still pursue their obligations as world citizens. However, from 1990 to 2004, Taiwan's carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rate doubled, giving it the worst record of all nations in terms of CO2 emission growth rate.
Currently, Taiwan is the world's 23rd-largest CO2 emitter, which means that it is not pushing itself to improve. Going as far as participating in the recent Environment Ministerial Meeting with Latin American allies only shows the nation's unrealistic approach in handling environmental issues.
Also, utilizing public resources to invest in Central America further reveals Taiwan's hypocritical use of environmental protection as an excuse to engage in dollar diplomacy.
On the issue of CO2 emissions, there is still a lot of basic work to do right here. Therefore, it is unrealistic to negotiate politically motivated deals for carbon dioxide emissions trading with other countries or to help less developed nations emit less CO2 in order to decrease overall emissions.
Today, the overall results of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have been unsuccessful and industrial and business groups have insisted on obstructing the implementation of a target year for cutting CO2 emissions.
This is like a person preparing to go on a diet without measuring his or her weight first or setting a weight-loss goal but then going to help a friend lose weight. Such reasoning is clearly absurd.
Premier Su Tseng-chang's (
On top of that, Chinese Steel has planned to build a steel mill in the proposed Pinnan Industrial Complex (
Once these projects are completed, the nation's southwest coast will have become completely artificial and the greenhouse gas emissions rate will have increased by 20 percent to 40 percent.
Vice Premier Tsai Ing-wen (
But Tsai did not mention a word about government projects to develop major CO2 emitting industries, deliberately hiding this truth from Taiwan's diplomatic allies.
The new documentary An Inconvenient Truth starring former US vice president Al Gore tells about the dangers of climate change. The most shocking scenes are of the rapidly melting ice in the Antarctic, Arctic and Greenland's glaciers. In addition, the US Department of Defense published a long-concealed confidential document saying that the ice thickness of the Arctic Sea has shrunk by a half.
Science Magazine published a report in November 2004 of a survey of global warming research from across the world. It said that not one of the studies denied the gravity of global warming. However, a random sampling of media reports showed that 53 percent of articles said that global warming has not been confirmed. It could be said that there has been a group of influential people over recent years who are unwilling to face the truth, and even distort it.
The end of the film mentions an activist plan to vote for public representatives who care about global warming. With the political culture in Taiwan today, elections have turned politicians into stage entertainers and fostered the forming of factions, which results in electing corrupt and incapable liars to office. The public must open its eyes and carefully examine who is telling the truth and who is lying.
Pan Han-shen is steering board member of the Green Party Taiwan and a Green Party candidate for the Taipei City Council.
Translated by Lin Ya-ti
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