Taipower needs to rethink
Taipower plans to construct a super high-voltage (345,000 volts) transmission tower and line in the corridor between Peitou (北斗) and Tienwei (田尾) in Changhua County. Tienwei residents staged a demonstration against this project last Sunday. The demonstration was televised but hardly made the headlines.
It is a well-known fact that the electromagnetic fields generated by high-voltage transmission towers and lines have long-term adverse effects, including cancer for human and animals alike. Since the target corridor is a densely populated area, it would be hard to measure the extent of damage that Taipower’s project could engender.
Tienwei is considered the flower garden of Taiwan. This beautiful town in central Taiwan attracts many tourists who enjoy and purchase a variety of beautiful flowers and plants. This is a vital industry. If Taipower’s super high-voltage project were completed, tourists would shy away from the area and the outcome would be unbearable. The local economy would be destroyed, property values would plunge and people would be deprived of another beautiful place for leisure and relaxation.
As one of the Tienwei demonstrators suggested, Taipower should shift the high-voltage system to the shore along the nearby Choshui River (濁水溪), where the ecological effect would be minimal. Who knows, the turbid water in the river might clear up as a result of the operation of this system.
Energy, environment and economy (the 3E’s) should be mutually compatible. Taipower is advised to reevaluate the route of the proposed system so that the 3E’s are optimized without damaging each other.
CHARLES HONG
Columbus, Ohio
No clean coal
Bjorn Lomborg, the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, heaped scorn on anti-coal environmentalists (“Getting rid of coal-fired power plants will not be that easy,” March 18, page 9). Lomborg is an economist who relates all public projects to rigorous “cost-benefit analysis” and the benefits he values are primarily economic. Like most apologists for corporate eco-crime, he sees “the economy” as sacred, while rivers and mountains are just features on a map.
A very instructive reply to Lomborg by Tom Burke, former director of Friends of the Earth, can be found in an old issue of the Guardian. In the article, “This is neither scepticism nor science — just nonsense,” published on Oct. 23, 2004, Burke asked why Lomborg’s work on climate change was taken seriously.
Responsible environmentalists aren’t asking that we abruptly pull the plug on all coal-fired plants. There is a need to transition from horribly polluting sources of energy to cleaner, renewable ones. Everyone knows this will take time.
However, with oil prices poised to soar at any time, countries that have a lot of coal (including China and the US) are ramping up production. In the US, coal mining often involves blowing the top off a mountain, displacing huge amounts of rubble into stream valleys and aggressively removing coal seams underneath. “Restoration” afterwards is like having your face surgically removed and getting a rubber mask as a replacement. Lomborg is fronting for companies that want to do a great deal more of this work.
We need less, not more, coal mining and coal burning. Not only do coal plants contribute to global warming, the fly ash and chemical discharge from coal-burning plants poisons the air, land and water. Mercury discharged by coal plants builds up in bugs, fish and birds and ultimately in humans at the top of the food chain, and it is a very serious poison. The world’s dirtiest coal plant is located in Taichung, Taiwan. In spite of recent efforts to spin “clean coal,” there really is no such thing.
CHRISTOPHER LOGAN
Ilan
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