Wednesday was Earth Day. Many environmental forums, camps, film festivals and beach clean-up activities were held by civic organizations in the hope that more people would show concern for our planet.
After all, Earth is our mother and when she is ill, we cannot afford to ignore it.
Prior to Earth Day, the government and the Bureau of Energy (能源局) organized a National Energy Conference with great fanfare, giving the impression that they were serious about energy and carbon emissions.
However, over two whole days, not a single mention was made of the most crucial factor in greenhouse gas emissions in Taiwan — industrial restructuring. The nation’s highest environmental official, the minister of the Environmental Protection Administration, was noticeably absent, thus failing to show that he was working to curb global warming and take a square look at climate change.
Nor was the finance minister anywhere in sight, as if the reform of the energy tax system was none of his concern.
The result of the conference was that many were left with the impression that nuclear power was the low-carbon energy of choice.
Taiwan may not be easy to find on a world map, but the country’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions ranked 22nd in the world in 2006.
Because Taiwan is not recognized as a country, it is temporarily exempt from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
However, when the signatories to the framework meet for the 15th time in Copenhagen in December to focus on more advanced developing countries and other “economic entities with high carbon emissions,” Taiwan will no longer be invisible.
Nichoas Stern, a former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, has said that global warming is not a natural occurrence: It is a man-made disaster and the most serious and urgent challenge humanity faces.
If we continue to let the government turn farmland that people rely on for their livelihoods into concrete deserts to develop high carbon-emission industries, if we continue to remain silent as the government allows power plants to expand their facilities year after year based on inflated power usage statistics, and if we continue to accept excessive logging and over-reliance on petrochemical products, Taiwan will not escape censure and international sanctions for its high pollution and carbon emissions, just as it will not escape the consequences of global warming.
Seeing the invasion of green-washed advertising on Earth Day, I wonder how we will be able to explain to our children what we have done. Earth Day should be a day to show our care for the planet. Will it become a day of grief?
Wang Min-ling is Mercy on the Earth, Taiwan’s deputy secretary-general.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
With escalating US-China competition and mutual distrust, the trend of supply chain “friend shoring” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fragmentation of the world into rival geopolitical blocs, many analysts and policymakers worry the world is retreating into a new cold war — a world of trade bifurcation, protectionism and deglobalization. The world is in a new cold war, said Robin Niblett, former director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Niblett said he sees the US and China slowly reaching a modus vivendi, but it might take time. The two great powers appear to be “reversing carefully
Taiwan is facing multiple economic challenges due to internal and external pressures. Internal challenges include energy transition, upgrading industries, a declining birthrate and an aging population. External challenges are technology competition between the US and China, international supply chain restructuring and global economic uncertainty. All of these issues complicate Taiwan’s economic situation. Taiwan’s reliance on fossil fuel imports not only threatens the stability of energy supply, but also goes against the global trend of carbon reduction. The government should continue to promote renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, as well as energy storage technology, to diversify energy supply. It
Former Japanese minister of defense Shigeru Ishiba has been elected as president of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and would be approved as prime minister in parliament today. Ishiba is a familiar face for Taiwanese, as he has visited the nation several times. His popularity among Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers has grown as a result of his multiple meetings and encounters with legislators and prominent figures in the government. The DPP and the LDP have close ties and have long maintained warm relations. Ishiba in August 2020 praised Taiwan’s
On Thursday last week, the International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a well-researched report titled “The Widening Schism across the Taiwan Strait,” which focused on rising tensions between Taiwan and China, making a number of recommendations on how to avoid conflict. While it is of course laudable that a respected international organization such as the ICG is willing to think through possible avenues toward a peaceful resolution, the report contains a couple of fundamental flaws in the way it approaches the issue. First, it attempts to present a “balanced approach” by pushing back equally against Taiwan’s perceived transgressions as against Beijing’s military threats
RSS