The government could allow industries to plant trees in China and other countries to help reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, an official said yesterday.
Under a bill proposed by the Cabinet, authorities would place caps on the amount of carbon dioxide that major industries are allowed to emit annually. The legislature is expected to approve the bill soon, officials said.
Stephen Shen (沈世宏), head of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), told lawmakers that companies may choose to grow trees, which can absorb carbon dioxide, in Taiwan or in other countries to help reach the emission targets by offsetting some of their gas emissions.
“Carbon dioxide emissions cause warming globally, not just in Taiwan,” he said.
Some industries say they cannot find enough land to plant trees domestically.
Officials say oil refineries, power plants and steel, chemical and plastics factories together accounted for more than 50 percent of the 268 million tonnes of greenhouse gases produced by the nation last year.
The government has pledged to gradually cut its greenhouse gases so that its 2016 total would not exceed this year’s level.
The government has said it will plant 60,000 hectares of forest in the next few years to help reach that goal.
Taiwan is not a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
But as a major trader, Taiwan wants to contain its greenhouse gases to prevent other countries from imposing barriers on its products on environmental grounds.
In related news, the EPA yesterday encouraged consumers to help fight global warming by shopping in stores that display “Green Store” certificates and purchase eco-friendly products that carry the EPA’s “Green Mark.”
“In observance of World Environment Day tomorrow, the EPA has planned an array of activities with a central theme of promoting a low carbon economy,” the EPA Air Quality Protection and Noise Control director-general Hsiao Hui-chuan (蕭慧娟) said.
Though the concept of “green consumption” may sound like an oxymoron, Yang Ching-shi (楊慶熙), the director-general of the EPA’s department of supervision evaluation and dispute resolution, said that shopping green means offering more sustainable options to the public when they purchase necessities.
“When we say green consumption, we are telling the public to choose products friendly to the environment when they need to buy things. However, we still encourage people to abstain from buying unnecessary things,” Yang said.
With this in mind, the EPA refrains from giving Green Marks to products it does not deem as life necessities, such as disposable diapers or kitchen napkins, he said.
Beyond promoting the green concept, the EPA also aims to remind businesses to keep sustainability in mind while fixing their eyes upon the economy.
“[The administration] started issuing Green Store certificates to retailers who carry three or more Green Mark products this year, with the goal of raising the certification threshold when more stores begin to sell green products,” he said.
Also See: Ministry to revise rules for cabbies
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary