How to survive when it comes to this circumstance
撐下去
撐下去
According to the
weather forecast, the unstable weather will stay until the weekend.When cold front
comes down to Taiwan from China in the winter, it brings gusty winds,
especially makes cold drafts entering
the top floors and increases heating needs. It might be a wise action
to have draft-proof windows and doors in the northern
Taiwan.
The sudden drops of temperatures, more than 10°C between night and
day, might also result in life-threatening heart attacking on the elderly for
example. However, it doesn’t happen as in the States that frostbite can set in
on uncovered skin in a matter of minutes because the snowing moments occur in the high mountain areas a few times a year.
The unstable weather will stay until the weekend, and again there will be a southward moving cold front from China then. The air pollution comes with the cold front to Taiwan from China again.
Talking about the air pollution in Taiwan, it is not only, especially in winter, from the northern mainland, China, but some other factors such as industrial emission or the pollutants from too many motorcycles running everywhere. Some of the pollutants are visible and other invisible, which surely bring damaging effects on our environment where we live in and no way to escape from.
Carbon dioxide is
widely considered to be a main pollutant when associated with power plants in
central Taiwan if one gives a close look at the connection on
http://aqicn.org/map/taiwan/ of “air pollution in Taiwan: Real-time Air Quality
Index Map.”
There are the factors of pollution which are beyond controversy, but a variety of ways to limit emissions of carbon dioxide might be considered to take. On a personal level, taking public transportation, instead of driving your own car or motorcycle, and doing recycling seem a good way to reduce a person’s amount of carbon dioxide, putting into the atmosphere.
But, here comes a question for every mayor of each city in Taiwan, including the mayor of Taipei where the public transportation is the most convenient in fact, whether the transportation system is ready to reduce the increasing numbers of cars and motorcycles bought every year.
There are too many people commute daily to be offered efficient transport. How could the government cut down the number of vehicles as expected while carbon dioxide emissions mainly coming from the coal-fired power plants are the nations's top primary source of pollution?
No doubt our government should follow the international agreement between countries that should cut back on carbon dioxide emissions on a larger scale. Besides, the method suggested is to put taxes on carbon emissions or higher taxes on gasoline, so that people and companies will have greater incentives to conserve energy and pollute less.
In one month, our new government run by Tsai Ing-wen who takes the office of president in May this year might reveal the new policy about the controversial issue of energy in her inaugural speech.
Truly, a referendum or a so-called I-voting seems impossible to hold and then justify if it is a wise move to cease or continue the energy-producing nuclear power plant.
In addition, how
could we not violate the code of lessening carbon dioxide emissions in years
and restrict them within the limits if the coal-fired power plants still exit?
And, how could we be provided with energy and survive if both of them are all gone,
nuclear power plants and coal-fired power plants?
Energy in Taiwan
All
plants in Taiwan are run by the state-run Taiwan Power. The Taiwan Power
Company (Taipower) is responsible for production and distribution of electric
power in Taiwan. The company has five coal-fired power stations, including
Taichung. Coal accounts for the biggest slice in Taiwan's energy requirement
mix. The Atomic Energy Council (AEC) in Taiwan is effectively
the regulatory body, but plants are still subject to International Atomic Energy
Agency safeguards.
Since
Taiwan lacks energy resources and heavily relies on import, it is a top
priority to develop clean, sustainable, and independent energy to achieve the
balance among the issues of energy security, environmental protection, industrial
competitiveness, and the huge pressure of reducing CO2 emissions through diverse strategies.
The
fact is that Taiwanese plants are high performers, with above average 88.5% availability
over 2005-2010. Therefore, per capita carbon dioxide emissions are three times
the world average and Taiwan ranked number one in annual increase of per capita
carbon dioxide emissions in 2008.
It
makes Taiwan rank third in Asia and 32nd worldwide in the 2009 Climate Change
Performance Index (CCPI) for carbon dioxide emissions, published by Climate
Action Network Europe (CAN-Europe) and Germanwatch. Now Taipower’s planning to replace the generator setups in the 2,200MW for improving and reducing CO2 emissions as expected hopefully.
The question here for our new government is whether or not we
do need nuclear plants, what risk we might face and what benefits we might
gain indeed.
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