Air Quality - an Open Letter

Dear Taiwan.
My mate had an asthma attack last night while we were out on a bike ride. It was pretty scary (for me).

The air quality here is shit. We all know this, but think about this:

Stop blaming China. Take a look at yourself in the mirror.

Stop putting on a facemask and thinking everything will be fine. It won’t. You may as well put an Elastoplast on a severed artery.

Turn off your scooters while sat at a red light for 90/60/30 seconds or whatever. You don’t have air-con in your scooter.

Don’t turn on your scooter while you are pushing back out of a parking space. THERE IS NO REVERSE GEAR ON MOST SCOOTERS

Stop riding those filthy 2-stroke scooters belching out thick blue smoke. If you see someone riding one TELL THEM THEY ARE AN IGNORANT, SELFISH TWAT. Don’t ignore/tolerate such behaviour.

Stop burning shedloads of paper money every day/week/month, just because the Chinese calendar tells you it is a good day. It’s not a good day. You are pointlessly filling the air with pollutants. See also: FIREWORKS every other f**king day.

Stop pulling across oncoming vehicles causing them to brake and re-accelerate. Just imagine all that extra fuel being wasted SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU CAN’T WAIT FOR A FEW SECONDS. As a (healthy) by-product, it may even prevent a few collisions. Correction: it will undoubtedly prevent thousands of collisions.

If you are Taiwanese and can read this, please pass it on. Don’t expect others to do it. EVERYONE can make a difference and they can do it NOW. It is quite simple.

Please try. My lungs will thank you.

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The biggest problem is the coal plant here in Taichung, as well as the continues tree-cutting going on nearby here. And they want to activate two more stacks in the coal plant.

That, coupled with scooters, are the biggest polluters of mid-Taiwan. Taipei is actually pretty nice, when it comes to pollution. I consistently see green days up there. Yellow to red down here in Taichung.

Unfortunately this won’t change as long as Taipei continues to receive money from the coal and oil companies.

Give it 30 years though.

the largest coal-fired power plant in the world. Taiwan, jia-you!

I think this is illegal. If it’s not illegal, it’s very unsafe to turn off your scooter when stopped at a light. You never know if something occurs and you need to move out of the way. The extra 2-3 seconds it takes you to turn on your scooter could be a huge difference. Now I’m not disagreeing that it would be nice for motorists to do this (many already do to save a little gas), but I have to take the selfish option here and say that my scooter will stay on at red lights. However, I have no sympathy towards the 50cc two strokers out there blowing out death by the second.

A few of us got hit pretty bad last week during our training ride. In the morning when we went up Yang Ming Shan it was ok. The north coast was ok as well. However, the road going up from Yang Ming Shan from Jin Shan was pretty bad. We already had 90k in our legs and by the time we hit the top, all of us were very dizzy. We assumed it had something to do with the sulfur from the volcano, but turns out the air quality was shite! It was very very rare that air quality at 800m in Yang Ming Shan is that bad.

Changing this will take awhile. I have to say 1 out of every 200 motorists will give you way. I give way as often as I can in hopes of the person I give way to to do onto others.

This is a massive problem, much more than many Taiwanese people realise. However, it’s religion and religious practices are the hardest practices of all to change. These practices are also handed down from generation to generation meaning that there’s no real hope of seeing change any time soon. Technology and innovation may bring us new forms of power generation and transportation, but the sons and daughters of today’s sons and daughters will still believe that burning that paper will help them in some perverse way.

This is a massive problem, much more than many Taiwanese people realise. However, it’s religion and religious practices are the hardest practices of all to change. These practices are also handed down from generation to generation meaning that there’s no real hope of seeing change any time soon. Technology and innovation may bring us new forms of power generation and transportation, but the sons and daughters of today’s sons and daughters will still believe that burning that paper will help them in some perverse way.[/quote]

A few years ago, with my suggestion, my family already decided to stop burning paper money. I’m lucky that my influence on my mother, who is the oldest of the family, can make the decisions. Also, spending real money on fake money only to be burned? Might as well burn real money. Amiright?

Also, grandpa, and great grandpa and great grandma must be driving Bentley’s and brushing their teeth with Fiji water with the hundreds if not thousands of 1,000,000,000 USD bills we sent to them the years before we stopped. :laughing:

I heart this rant. Fuckin A. :cactus:

I’ve lived in Taichung and it also drove me bananas. Even though I mostly liked Taichung I was glad we had to leave it due to work reasons as healthwise it’s going to take years off your life living there.

[quote=“ranlee”][quote=“ColT”]
Turn off your scooters while sat at a red light for 90/60/30 seconds or whatever. You don’t have air-con in your scooter.
[/quote]

I think this is illegal. If it’s not illegal, it’s very unsafe to turn off your scooter when stopped at a light. [/quote]

They have stop-start systems in several vehicles now. The engine is automatically turned off then started again when you lift your foot off the brake. Other systems are left on so it’s much better than doing it manually. I imagine it would be easy to do in new scooters (probably already have them on some motorcycles and scooters, actually).

[quote=“marasan”][quote=“ranlee”][quote=“ColT”]
Turn off your scooters while sat at a red light for 90/60/30 seconds or whatever. You don’t have air-con in your scooter.
[/quote]

I think this is illegal. If it’s not illegal, it’s very unsafe to turn off your scooter when stopped at a light. [/quote]

They have stop-start systems in several vehicles now. The engine is automatically turned off then started again when you lift your foot off the brake. Other systems are left on so it’s much better than doing it manually. I imagine it would be easy to do in new scooters (probably already have them on some motorcycles and scooters, actually).[/quote]

I know a few years back the BMW 5 series (or maybe it was the 3) one of the new options was that if it detected your vehicle was at a stop for a certain amount of time, it would switch off the engine. They calculated that it did save fuel and of course reduced the carbon foot print.

I’m sure the Toyota Camry probably now has this option. :slight_smile:

The farmers in Hshinchu constantly burn debris. I’ve written numerous emails and opened tickets with the EPA and they don’t do anything. Locals tell me not to confront farmers because they’ve been doing this for years. BS. Anyone out there blowing the whistle on this and what experiences did you have? Some old timers told me locals don’t like hearing criticism. That’s a huge understatement. I want to do something effective without personal risk. Dreaming? Thanks in advance

Every country and most cities in the world have had their own issue with air pollution. It was much worse in London or New York 100 years ago.

Even Paris has significant pollution problems right now.

People have asthma attacks everywhere.

This seems like a Taiwan bashing topic.

if there is one thing taiwan deserves to be bashed on its the driving/pollution/scooters. nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

Talk about sticking your head in the (dirty) sand.

My idea was to sponsor giant electronic billboards on highways and in cities where they would display the air pollution index in real time and then give advice about how to improve the situation.

Responding to tango42:
When I report to the EPA and they don’t do anything what would you call that? When the farmers are burning upwind 15 meters from your property line and your family is having a get together what would you call that? When the valley you live in is full of smoke from 4 different fires burning around you, how would you talk about this? The reason I’m discussing is to get other’s opinions.

I think there should be public service announcements on TV about air pollution.

Live and let live doesn’t work all the time. Air pollution matters.

Ignoring problems is immature. When a designated government body does it what would you call it?

The EPA doesn’t want to enforce the laws. That’s how I see it.
Why? Bc they don’t have the budget.
Why?
Bc citizens don’t want to pay taxes…
All goes back to cheating.
This isn’t about money. This is about changing people’s behavior. There are no smoking ads on TV why not farmers not burning ads?

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After posting above I found this: http://web.epa.gov.tw/en/epashow.aspx?list=99&path=11962&guid=c089b2e2-fb8b-47f2-9d19-f04d313818b3&lang=en-us
The 8th bullet addresses the funding issue. My question is how will this be assessed?

Air pollution enforcement and protection is piecemeal.

There are people working on countryside schemes to improve the situation. Beside Taichung science park in Taichung I have seen them collecting the rice straw in bundles to be picked up and burnt or used offsite.

There may be some government schme to apply for funds in your area.

The EPA won’t do anything because they have to catch them in the act. The police say it’s not their jurisdiction.

I was hiking once when a police car was driving by and a farmer had smoke all over the place from his fire. I complained to the two policemen. They told me they couldn’t do anything. I asked them if they could just warn the farmer and they agreed and scolded the guy in front of me.

I think many have complained because I’ve been noticing that the farmers are now saving their burning for after the sun goes down or before it comes up. It sucks because the air is otherwise pretty good where I live.

Too bad about air quality in Taichung. I hear the weather in Taichung is otherwise actually pretty nice with much less rain (more sunny days) than Taipei. Taipei rains all the time - it seems.

yea its been pissing down recently