Taiwan should adopt legislation similar to that of other countries to combat light pollution, New Power Party Legislator Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said jointly with the Taiwan Dark-Sky Association on Saturday.
Since 2015, there have been about 2,300 annual cases of light pollution reported to authorities in Taipei and New Taipei City, she said.
However, while the nation has the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法) to regulate air pollution, and the Noise Control Act (噪音管制法) to handle noise complaints, it has no laws to deal with light pollution, she said.
Photo courtesy of the Cingjing Tourism Association
“The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) promulgated guidelines for preventing light pollution in 2021, but there are no legal or administrative implications for those guidelines,” she said.
“The EPA has a negative attitude toward the issue,” she added.
International Dark-Sky Association executive director Ruskin Hartley said that tackling light pollution is a global trend.
Hartley, who recently visited Lienchiang County, cited local bylaws there that prevent light pollution as an example of this trend.
However, even there, people face hundreds of Chinese fishing boats that traverse nearby waters from June to October every year, using bright lights while fishing at night, he said.
Too much light is a waste of energy and also negatively impacts nearby ecology, Taiwan Dark-Sky Association chairman Axiou Lin (林正修) said.
“Excessive light can even impact people’s health, and things like the brightness and type of light, and the angle of light installations are all things that need attention,” he said.
“I hope the government can give the issue more serious thought,” he added.
Introducing legislation to tackle light pollution would also help the government reach its net zero carbon emissions goal, by using energy more efficiently, Chen said, adding that this could be done through the use of more energy-efficient lighting.
Chen said she asked the EPA to deliberate with government ministries, non-governmental organizations and experts on possible legislation to tackle light pollution, and to come up with a proposal within three months.
She also asked the Construction and Planning Agency to discuss possible changes to building standards to require more efficient lighting in all new buildings, the Directorate General of Highways to discuss more efficient street lighting, and the Council of Agriculture to look into more efficient lighting for fishers, she said.
The Bureau of Standards could consult with the International Commission on Illumination or other international standards to help it draft lighting standards for Taiwan, she said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
COGNITIVE WARFARE: Allegations that the documents were proof that the former US envoy tried to smuggle alcohol were designed to manipulate public opinion Leaked documents related to customs clearance procedures for vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) that have been circulating on the Internet appear to be an attempt to manipulate public opinion against the government, a source said on Sunday. A post on online platform Baoliao Commune (爆料公社) on Sunday showed documents it said were evidence that Hsiao had smuggled alcohol through customs with the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and said that the documents were part of a 4GB data dump of confidential material acquired by hackers. In a rebuttal, the source said that they were not confidential documents, but rather