Sustainable development is key to improving a nation's competitiveness, Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) said yesterday.
"The old way of competition is out while the new way of competition is in," he told a roomful of government officials attending a 90-minute lecture entitled "A Nation's Competitiveness and the Sustainable Development of Mankind" held at the Civil Service Development Institute in Taipei City yesterday morning.
The old way of competition, according to Lee, is the furthering of a nation's competitiveness by using natural resources without considering the impact on the planet.
The new way of competition, he said, refers to enhancing a nation's competitiveness with sustainable development in mind.
In striving for competitiveness, Taiwan should not blindly follow the footsteps of Western countries, which care more about short-term commercial interests than the future of the country, Lee said.
"Taiwan needs to find its own way and lead the rest of the world," he said. "I know the road is long and bumpy, but I hope the world will become one big family by the end of the century. I know I won't be around by that time but I do hope someone would fax the news to me."
Lee said that the direction the world is heading is wrong. Among the world's many problems, he said, is overpopulation.
"Overpopulation results in the deprivation of natural resources and the harming of the ecosystem," Lee said.
Citing his own experience, Lee said that when he went to the US in 1962 to pursue a doctorate he was surprised to see how Americans wasted napkins.
"When I returned to Taiwan 30 years later in 1994, I saw Taiwanese people had already picked up the bad habit," he said.
Lee also linked recent natural disasters in Taiwan to the greenhouse effect.
"When Typhoon Nari hit the island last year, authorities said that it brought the heaviest amount of rainfall in a century. But they said the same thing when Typhoon Xangsane swept through Taiwan in 2000," he said. "Just before the government tried to figure out a way to take care of the flooding problem, droughts hit this year."
The Academia Sinica president also shared what he saw as a link between Typhoon Nari and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, that being the energy policies of Taiwan and the US.
"The Sept. 11 incident results from the US support of Middle Eastern countries, which in return provide the US with cheap oil," he said. "Typhoon Nari has a lot to do with the nation's overdependence on gasoline, which generates carbon dioxide that contributes to the greenhouse effect."
Disaster prevention is why the government needs to focus on the development of science and technology, which does not harm the environment as much as traditional industries, Lee said.
Lee also praised Premier Yu Shyi-kun, who he said had promoted sustainable development.
"I'm glad to see the premier recognizes the importance of sustainable development and makes efforts to realize it," he said.
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