For a nation that begs the sympathy of the world, Taiwan is certainly not acting like a good citizen of it. Max Hirsch of the Taipei Times writes on Taiwan's disgusting emissions behavior, as the Ministry of Education is trying to get schools to conserve even as new industrial infrastructure creates pollution that dwarfs any possible gains from school conservation...The Ministry of Education is aiming for zero growth in school energy consumption this year amid the nation's soaring greenhouse gas emissions, Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said yesterday on the eve of World Environment Day.
Minister Tu also hacked on China -- whose plan to build a couple of thousand coal-fired power plants will surely doom the world -- but the real problem in Taiwan is....Taiwan. Longtime activist Linda Arrigo of the local Green party commented in response to Tu:
Environmental experts here, however, panned the government for "irresponsibility in its rampant increase of carbon dioxide emissions," saying that the nation's modest geographic size yet relatively high level of development make emissions levels inexcusable.
Unleashing more than 2.17 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, or nearly 1 percent of the global total, Taiwan churns out more greenhouse gases than all but 21 nations, according to the Environmental Protection Administration.
"It's pretty bad," said Linda Arrigo of the Green Party Taiwan, a political party dedicated to protecting the environment, referring to the country's carbon dioxide emissions.
"Taiwan has doubled its carbon dioxide emissions since 1990, the year of the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to spur nations to gradually decrease such production," she said.
By more than doubling its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2005, according to official statistics, Taiwan's energy policies run counter to the spirit of the protocol, Arrigo said.
"It's outrageous," she said.
Speaking to the Taipei Times on condition of anonymity yesterday, a senior foreign trade official familiar with environmental issues here agreed, saying that "a negative de-coupling" in which the country's carbon dioxide emissions soar while its GDP drops, begs to be inverted.
But that's unlikely to happen in the near future because of the projected growth in carbon dioxide emissions, Arrigo said.
Steel and petrochemical plants scheduled to go online in Yunlin County, Arrigo said, would add approximately another 20 percent to the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.
"It's nice that schools want to decrease their energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission levels," she said. "But that's just a tiny fraction of the problem."
No question that Taiwan needs to get to work on implementing wind power and on cutting emissions.
[Linda Arrigo] [environment]
I'd say the MoE's plans to cut electricity consumption in schools has more to do with economics than any concern about the environment. But announcing it on World Environment Day is good PR.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what % of Taiwan's CO2 output comes from the burning of ghost money.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what % of Taiwan's CO2 output comes from the burning of ghost money.
ReplyDeleteI bet alot. It is a industry of its own.
Taiwan's inability to grasp basic diplomatic or public relations principles in its own defense never ceases to amaze. "Rest of the world - please defend us endangered species-eating, draft dodging, polluting investors into the economy that might attack us."
ReplyDeleteThe number is not 2 million tons of CO2 emissions, but 276 million tons.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been a translation mistake.
The annual world total is 7.8 billion tons. That puts TW at about 3% of the global total. 1% seems like an outdated number.
http://pages.ca.inter.net/~jhwalsh/wfsesr.html