Decreasing the Greenhouse Emission Based Upon Right Political Thoughts

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) indicated in the fourth scientific report on 2nd Febuary, 2007 that in the past century, the average global temperature has been rising 0.74 Celsius degrees. Plus, if greenhouse gas keeps emitting as the current trend, twenty years later the average temperature will rice 0.2 degrees every ten year. Until the end of the century, greenhouse gas concentration will increase two times compared to concentration prior to the industrial revolution, and the average temperature will rise 30 degrees. The report suggests that international discussions should urge industrialized countries to take severe control of the total amount of emission, encourage developing countries to restrict their emission, and stress on the policy adaptation and facility initiation.

To encourage all the states to reduce greenhouse gas emission, the UNFCCC also proposes six climate policy tools, including finance, market, volunteer deduction measures, control and standard initiation, environmental education and research, etc. Indeed, there are many policy tools to achieve greenhouse gas deduction or deal with environmental pollution. However, I would like to argue that it is a must to adjust the current ruling thoughts. If the ruling thoughts are improper, even using more and more policy tools cannot be able to solve problems.

In the past, Taiwan deprived off all the natural resources and indeed it brought us a huge amount of wealth. Meanwhile, we also had to sacrifice social justice and environment. When the economic growth reached 9% and 10%, that was also the most polluted time in Taiwan’s environmental history. Pollutions and contaminations like diosin and polychlorinated biphenyl kept occurring at the time.

If Taiwan still wants to copy the development model like what those developing countries do or to propose economic growth as the top priority, then it show that Taiwan does not correspond to global developing trend and instead attach to the out-dated thoughts that human beings could drive out nature. This is definitely not what human society seeks in the 21st century or the future direction for Taiwan.

If the ruling party always views economic growth as the priority policy, then the country will return to the old path of the world factory mode. Professor G. M. Meier and Professor J. E. Stiglitz at Stanford University indicate that the developing mode in developing countries overly stress on economic growth and ignore balanced development of human beings; these states prefer to develop first and then clean the environment. In fact, this type of thought is wrong and costly, and unable to maintain sustainable development. After all, human beings have to co-exist with environment harmoniously in order to maintain a sustainable development. Therefore, political leaders should have correct policy thoughts before discussing how to deduct the greenhouse emission.