The Cabinet’s Tax Reform Committee recently decided that the government should gradually implement a proposed energy and carbon tax next year at the earliest, but this decision was instantly rejected by Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義). Wu and legislators reacted as if the taxes would increase public suffering, adding that the government should not levy new taxes until after the economy recovers. It seems everyone is against the energy and carbon tax proposals.
These reactions are disappointing because they fail to address the matter. Most people, in fact, jumped to conclusions before understanding what the proposal entails. The development of civil society in Taiwan should be fully encouraged, but this kind of decision-making runs counter to that aspiration.
As a matter a fact, neither an energy tax, a carbon tax nor even an environmental tax are news. While countries in northern Europe began imposing carbon taxes around 1990, their public welfare systems remain enviable. Taxes, therefore, do not necessarily cause public suffering. Everyone would be in favor of the kind of social welfare benefits seen in northern Europe.
It is true that some industries will be adversely affected by such taxation. In particular, energy-wasting, high carbon emission industries would be affected, which would make it difficult for those hoping to rely on cheap energy in the long run. However, such an outcome could be a good thing in terms of public benefits and long-term industrial development.
A short-term impact might be better for these industries than slow long-term suffering. Even grade school students know that energy conservation and carbon emission reduction lies in our future. As a result of cheap energy sources, there are no incentives for Taiwanese industries to make progress on that front; instead, they will become decreasingly competitive.
The international community has recently begun calling on corporations to assess their carbon footprint and energy efficiency. Companies that fail to adapt will disappear. If a smaller impact could push Taiwanese industry to catch up with the efficiency of enterprises in other advanced countries, that would be a good thing for Taiwan’s future industrial development.
Will gas prices of NT$45 per liter be considered high in future? If one argued that NT$10 for a bowl of plain noodles is expensive, everybody would counter that this is cheap. But would the same assertion have been right 40 years ago, when a bowl of noodles was only NT$2.
As for the argument that these taxes should not be levied until after the economy recovers, that might be true for other types of taxes. By that time, however, it would be even harder to impose energy and carbon taxes because when the global economy recovers, oil prices will skyrocket. We must not forget that not so long ago, critics expected that oil prices would exceed US$200 per barrel and that everyone would save energy and reduce carbon emissions even without the implementation of energy taxes.
It is hard to decide whether one should support or oppose the proposal. If the goal really is to save energy and reduce carbon emissions, there are actually more urgent policies than a carbon tax, such as quantity restrictions. Such restrictions are needed to plan an effective carbon tax and carbon-emissions trading system. We already know we will have to save energy and cut emissions, so any policy should be considered a major national initiative and be openly discussed.
Government officials and legislators should not be allowed to shoot down a policy on a whim before it has had a chance to be discussed thoroughly.
Kao Jehng-jung is a professor in the Institute of Environmental Engineering at National Chiao Tung University.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
The Honduran elections seem to have put China on defense. The promises of trade and aid have failed to materialize, industries are frustrated, and leading candidate Salvador Nasralla, who has increased his lead in the polls, has caused Beijing to engage in a surge of activity that appears more like damage control than partnership building. As Nasralla’s momentum has grown, China’s diplomacy, which seems to be dormant since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 2023, has shown several attempts to avoid a reversal if the Liberal or the National party — which also favor Taipei — emerge as winners in the
RSS