Yes, I get your points but whats ironic is that Taichung municipal government has no power at all to stop the local power plant, that’s a decision to be made by Tsai’s central government.
Like like like. Most of us would do a better job I swear.
I’ve never seen an I3 myself. Tesla’s here and there.
2 Likes
@shiadao: Lots of interesting stuff in your post, but I respectfully disagree with this:
This is a TINA point (“there is no alternative” a la Thatcher) used to shut down alternative possibilities. I believe there’s a TATA point to be made here (“there are thousands of alternatives”)—as your post helpfully points out. Definitely more can be done to clean up the air!
Getting back to the election, it’s hard to imagine how the KMT in its current state are going to be the ones to envision and implement these changes. It’s still amazing to me to see that party boldly presenting itself as the defender of a clean environment and clean air! In Taiwan, they’ve historically been the last guys you’d count on for stuff like that.
Guy
But the things shiadao pointed out are long term and needed to be started a few years ago. There are alternatives but for right now, I don’t think they are viable to fix the problem in 2019.
We are talking about the energy demands of right now, we’ve already been dangerously close to outages this summer and the summer before. And also the pollution is bad now.
Yes , I do concur that point , however the reality is that renewables and the coal -fired plants just can not produce enough to supply even current demand. It really is a TATA issue.
I had a Tesla model X Uber pick me up the other day. Weird but I’m not complaining.
Was it in Taipei? I had it 2 times by the same driver in Taipei.
That is so untrue. Air pollution was way worse 10 years ago. I used to go to high school there and I still used to travel there almost weekly and spend most of my holidays there. There are still some bad days in winter, but it’s gotten so much better.
It’s already the end of November, how many bad days (red or orange) has there been this year in relation to when Hu was the mayor? You can count them with just your fingers.
I don’t think so at all. Those who didn’t vote are usually absentees. They simply didn’t want to vote. I’m not saying that there’s no inconvenience, but the voter turnout rate remains high-ish.
The numbers of this year’s election aren’t out yet, but in 2016 the voter turnout rate was the highest amongst those between 20 and 29.
You spend most of your holidays in Taichung? Interesting indeed. Hardly a popular holiday destination for most.
Summer and winter holidays. I mostly just stayed at home.
He probably has family there. Wouldn’t be weird for him to go during break.
The head of the Central Election Commission resigned after not handling large voter turnouts well. Kind of makes you think, what if 90%+ of people voted. They couldn’t even handle the current voter turnout.
It’s the referendum’s fault. They need to backtrack the legislation and bring the high threshold back. Or abolish referendums altogether like the Netherlands did.
1 Like
I’ve lived in Taiwan 20years now and have never met a “foreigner” who supports a party contrary to what their spouses espouse! Are “we” all so biased because of what we’ve been “fed”?
Considering how complex politics are, you would probably only hear one side of the story and how the other is the evil party. I grew up with all my family supporters of the DPP. Large donations and some even local officials. Many DPP officials and candidates came to my grandfathers funeral.
But in the end, I just fell out of love after years of disappointment. I’ve never supported any KMT candidate, they’ve yet to produce one where I’ve considered. But I’ve become more and more critical of the DPP as well.
*correction. Actually I’ve met Ma many times. I didn’t mind him as the mayor, even had some hopes for his first presidency. I met him at a Christmas party and I got his signature lol. But realized quickly was a spineless president he was going to be.
I’ve also met CSB before, and Former President lee in the same room. Have never met Tsai unless you count her picture Across from me on the wall when I was in the army.
That’s a good point and my observation as well over the last 25 years, although I’m sure there are exceptions.
I have 
What did you think of her?
I feel like she didn’t do much local campaigning and public appearances. Ma did a lot of that. He greeted our treking group and the end of the Toroko trail after a 5 day trek once. Was right before the election so he was doing a lot of that.