Former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) yesterday said that he has accepted President William Lai’s (賴清德) invitation to serve as a consultant on his National Climate Change Strategy Committee, adding that he agreed with proposals to continue using nuclear energy.
The committee was one of three established one month after Lai took office on May 20, along with the Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee and the Healthy Taiwan Promotion Committee.
Pegatron Group (和碩集團) chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), who supports the use of nuclear energy, has been retained by the president to serve as the deputy convener of the climate change committee.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Many have perceived the appointment as a significant shift from the “nuclear-free homeland” policy, which the president’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has been espousing for decades.
Lee, 87, told political commentator Huang Kuang-chin (黃光芹) on her online talk show that he accepted Lai’s invitation because he had participated in many net zero emissions meetings around the world and felt obligated to inform the public about the importance of tackling challenges wrought by global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.
That more than 1,000 people died during the pilgrimage to Mecca this year shows that rising global temperatures could gradually turn the Earth into a place that is unfit for human habitation, the Nobel laureate in chemistry said, adding that humans would not survive natural disasters should global temperatures rise by 3°C.
“If we are not actively reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, we could become extinct like the dinosaurs,” Lee said, adding that this is the view of a responsible scientist, rather than exaggerated statements from an alarmist.
The nation’s goal of zero carbon emissions by 2050 cannot be met if the government fails to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030, he said.
“Nuclear energy still has its disadvantages given the current level of technology, but the potential disasters that it could bring cannot compare with the complete destruction of the human race,” Lee said.
“What Tung said is what he truly believes in, and he expressed his support for nuclear energy as an entrepreneur and from a scientific perspective. The position has made him a target of criticism, but he is heading in the right direction,” he added.
Lai also knows that the reform is necessary for society to change, but he is under a lot of pressure to make the first step, Lee said.
Given the size and density of Taiwan’s population, the nation cannot sustain itself by simply using renewable energy to replace the use of fossil fuels without using nuclear energy, or extending the use of existing nuclear power plants, Lee said.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS