Michael Nobel, the great-grandnephew of Nobel Prize founder Alfred Nobel, joined a group of local governmental officials and business leaders yesterday in Taipei to call on the public to take the battle against climate change seriously, a subject they said could affect the survival of humanity.
Nobel was the key guest speaker at the Energy Efficiency and Green Environment Forum, an event cosponsored by the Taiwan Architecture and Building Center and the Taiwan Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (TSHRAE).
"Much of the comfort of modern society depends on freely available electricity at reasonable prices. However, non-renewable energy, like the name suggests, will run out," Nobel said.
Not only is the world facing an energy shortage crisis, but energy consumption at present levels creates heavy pollution, which is causes global warming and threatens the survival of all species on the planet, he said.
"If the world"s carbon emission does not decrease by 50 [percent] to 85 percent by mid-century, the ecosystem that we have now could collapse," Nobel said, citing last year"s Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on climate change.
Taiwan should make greenhouse gas reduction the highest priority in its energy policy and act on global warming immediately, as the nation"s rate of temperature rise was steeper than the rest of the world, said Liu Shaw-chen (劉紹臣, director of the Research Center for Environmental Change at Academia Sinica.
"Since the industrial revolution, Taiwan"s temperature has increased 1.4?C, while the global average was 0.6?C," he said.
The impact of this rise for Taiwan has been serious, including shorter periods of sunshine －300 hours less each year compared with three decades ago －50 percent less relative humidity and 30 percent to 50 percent less light rain in the past 30 years, he said.
"Light rain is essential for the environment," Liu said.
The increase in the frequency of sandstorms in China in recent years is a possible result of that decrease in light rain, he said, because "while heavy rain usually goes directly into rivers, light rain is absorbed by the soil and keeps it moist."
During the forum, dozens of governmental officials and business leaders made vows to do more to conserve energy and preserve the environment.
"A `no-waste awareness" should be instilled in the public ??technological advances can also be used to develop more energy-efficient equipment," National Taipei University of Technology department of energy and refrigeration professor Chuah Yew-khoy (蔡尤溪 said.
The legislature will formulate new environmental laws and policies, including tree-planting projects and carbon emission reduction goals, Deputy Legislative Speaker Tseng Yuan-chuan (曾永權 told the audience.
"Ultimately, carbon emission reduction requires collaboration between governments, industry leaders, academics and the public," TSHRAE chair Tony Soo (蘇仲 said.
"If you don't change the way you think and behave, the result will be the same ??By doing small things like reusing your towels at a hotel, or setting your air-conditioner at a reasonable temperature, your efforts add up quickly," he said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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