“If we students do not have a future, then why do we need to go to school now?”
So said Chang Ting-wei (張庭瑋), a student at Heng Yee Catholic High School who on Sunday attended a news conference organized by several environmental groups.
The campaigners are urging Taiwanese students to skip school and join the Global Climate Strike For Future on May 24 to demand concrete action from adults and the government on climate change.
Chang’s statement — and his belief that he might have “no future” — perfectly encapsulates a worrying global trend toward climate alarmism, which is drowning out calm and considered debate.
While nobody would doubt the sincerity of the campaigners and students involved — and while there is a consensus among scientists that global warming poses a significant threat — is it wise, or even responsible, for adult campaigners to encourage children to skip classes in imitation of Swedish teenage climate advocate Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion movement in the UK?
Furthermore, does the central argument of the Global Climate Strike For Future movement — that adults and governments have not done enough to address climate change — hold true?
The Extinction Rebellion movement, which last month staged several days of disruptive protests in London, is a good place to start. The movement, launched in May last year, has made three demands of the UK government: to declare a climate and ecological emergency, enact legally binding measures to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and create a national “citizens’ assembly” responsible for making climate-related policy decisions.
Perhaps the first demand is necessary and proportionate, but it is mindlessly optimistic, to say the least, for the UK — the sixth-largest economy in the world — to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions within six years. It would require the shutting down of swathes of industry, the loss of thousands of jobs and would probably crash the economy too. As for the “citizens’ assembly” idea, the UK has one already: It is called the House of Commons.
What of the argument, advanced by Thunberg, that adults and governments are not doing enough? How does the evidence stack up in the case of the UK — but also Taiwan?
In the case of the UK, according to analysis of the latest available data from UK-based Web site Carbon Brief, UK carbon emissions peaked in 1973 and have since fallen by approximately 38 percent since 1990, faster than in any other major developed nation.
The British government is also investing more than US$3.28 billion into research and development to help it achieve targeted reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, and coal-generated power is to be phased out by 2025.
One could argue that the Extinction Rebellion, by focusing on the UK, is barking up the wrong tree. China emits more greenhouse gases than any other country; good luck trying to hold a similar protest in Beijing.
As for Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration is working to shift the nation’s energy supply toward renewable energy and has set itself a target of increasing the supply of renewable energy from 4.9 percent in 2017 to 20 percent by 2025, focusing on offshore wind energy.
Taiwan has its own unique set of priorities and environmental factors. The challenge of operating nuclear power safely in a major earthquake zone is a case in point for why advocates and students should think carefully before jumping on the latest global bandwagon and instead work toward developing a Taiwanese solution to this global problem.
Let us deal in facts, not emotions. Anything less does a disservice to the young and spreads unnecessary panic.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of