this simply isn’t a solution. everything right now contributing towards a cleaner environment (not sure what to be honest) is going to be nullified by this. it doesn’t make any sense. its basically the government admitting they have no commitment to a cleaner environment whatsoever.
people should be protesting this. but when you look outside and you see the choices people make on a day to day you can see that the people, aswell as the government, don’t really care.
this news has kinda bummed me out to be honest. even though taiwan is not making that much progress in these areas, i’m not sure i can accept moving backwards.
Nothing worthwhile has happened in Taiwan without people getting organized, without a struggle. The case of this ridiculous proposed coal plant will be no different. There will be a fight over this. If you care about this issue, support it and push for alternative solutions, including setting up incentives for reduced energy use.
Why not use an LNG plant? It’s more clean vs. coal? Also Mainland China has more use of renewable energy as a percentage than Taiwan, it’s one area Taiwan needs be better than China.
My uneducated guess is that natural gas is more expensive than coal, and that a higher electricity bill would piss off consumers more than a little bit of smog. Cough, cough.
They will complain about the pollution, but when it comes to alternatives they will say “mei banfa, taiwan jiushi zheyang” and not realize that they themselves are the very obstacle of progress.
There are problems getting Taichung LNG storage expanded, also EPA related, dolphins, coral . It also takes years to put into action . These are very expensive very large scale construction projects .
I remember reading that 2025 was supposed to be peak coal usage (percentage wise) with more gas to come onstream by 2030.
Which means Taiwan has a government target to actually increase air pollution including CO2 emissions until at least 2025.
Also the other issue some folks might not be aware of, electricity demand is climbing every year, so ‰ reduction in terms of ratio does not necessarily mean actual reduction in air pollution, need to check the nominal number.
YOu see what I don’t get more than anything is how come cigarette smoking is banned in many public places but bigger stuff like this is allowed to happen .
This more than anything is a HEALTH crisis.
Taiwan supposedly has one of the highest rate of lung cancer amongst the general population in the whole world. In this regard Taiwan is very very backwards…
(Not even talking about ignoring the great existential threat of our age, global warming )
The attitude is not cha by duo but more mei ban fa head down ignorance from top to bottom. In what developed country do people regularly burn stuff beside kids playgrounds or on the street ? Nobody questions it for fear of offending the stupid cultural norm. Of disturbing the peace. Burn burn burn. Let the kids suck in the pollution.
Look at Mayor Ke what has he done to clean up Taipei’s air in reality ? He is a heart surgeon he knows that air pollution is strongly correlated with cardiovascular disease and mortality .
Actually, just to be a little more precise, here’s one quote from the article, emphasis added: “The ongoing eight-year study has found that non-smokers here are twice as likely to develop the disease than are heavy smokers in the United States and Europe.”
They do wonder about possible genetic factors, as well as cooking, stir-frying, and lack of ventilation.
Taiwan (35 per 100k inhabitants) doesn’t even rank within top 15, and many of the countries with higher rate are in Europe and North America. That research is likely a load of crap, or is interpreted incorrectly.
Where did you find Taiwan in those stats? I dug into the cited fact sheets, and couldn’t find Taiwan or Chinese Taipei, although maybe it’s there under another name.
(Drives me crazy that so often Taiwan doesn’t appear in these sorts of international comparisons …)
My Chinese is nowhere near good enough to handle this sort of thing (perhaps my statistics isn’t either), but I wonder if the statistics in that page match the “Age-standardized Rate” on the Lung Cancer statistics page.