Opening Address of President Ma Ying-jeou at the European Union Climate Change Exhibition on the Campus of National Sun Yat-sen University
I am very honored to have this opportunity to be here at National Sun Yat-sen University to take part in the opening ceremony of the European Union Climate Change Exhibition, which is being held by the European Commission. You may be wondering why I would make a special trip from Taipei to Kaohsiung to take part in this activity. It is because we really are very concerned about the problem of global climate change.
Going by the Chinese lunar calendar, the first day of winter already arrived last week, but today, November 13th, the temperature in Kaohsiung is 28 degrees Celsius. It doesn't feel at all like winter. How could this be? It is the result of global climate change, which has triggered extremes in our weather. Droughts and flooding are happening at the same time, and typhoons are traveling along very strange paths. Typhoon Parma, for example, entered and left the Philippines three times. Such happenings are extremely rare. According to a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global climate change is caused by excessive emissions of CO2 that result from industrial activities.
The 23 million people of Taiwan account for just 0.3 percent of the world's 6.8 billion population, yet we are responsible for about 1 percent of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, we are one of the nations most badly affected by the impact of global climate change. A UN report issued in October notes that natural disasters occur with high frequency in the Asia-Pacific region. About 70% of all major natural disasters, such as typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis, occur in this region. This is undeniably related to global climate change. In the last century, global temperatures rose by 0.74 degrees on average, but the temperature in Taiwan rose by 1.2 degrees, fully 62% more than the global increase. This has sharply increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere over Taiwan. The number of typhoons has not increased, but their destructive power most certainly has.
When Typhoon Herbert hit Taiwan in 1996, I was serving as a minister without portfolio, and was dispatched by then-Premier Lien Chan to survey the areas affected by the disaster. The heaviest precipitation occurred on Mount Ali, where 1900 millimeters of rain fell. This rainfall broke the world record, and equaled the average annual precipitation of Europe. In 2001, however, when I was mayor of Taipei, Typhoon Nari dumped 2300 millimeters of rain on Taiwan. Then 2956 millimeters of rain fell on Mount Ali during Typhoon Morakot this past August. Unbelievably, a tourist center on Mount Ali was under six feet of water, at more than 2000 meters above sea level. Such things have never happened before. Global climate change is not some story from a faraway land. It is affecting us right here in Taiwan. I've come here to take part in this event because I want everybody to understand the importance of this issue.
In light of the importance of the global warming issue, we are very grateful to the European Commission for holding such a significant consciousness raising event here, and are very interested in working with the Commission. We would also like to thank National Sun Yat-sen University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for lending their assistance. I see that quite a few college and university presidents are here for the activities, and I do hope that they will return to their schools and share with students the things they learn here.
What can we do to combat global warming? One thing we absolutely must do is conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions. Natural disasters cannot be prevented, but their impact can be mitigated. And we must make adjustments to our industrial development policies. Our government has a very clear timetable for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is now 2009, and we intend by the year 2020 to bring greenhouse gas emissions back down to the level of 2008, and by 2025 to reduce them to the level of 2000. By 2050, emissions will be further reduced to half the level of 2000. This is an extremely ambitious plan, but it must be carried out, otherwise the earth will strike back at us in very punishing ways.
I must make special mention of the fact that Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, nor is it a member the Kyoto Protocol. Our many efforts to combat climate change are precisely what various international bodies and conventions require, and we observe the requirements even though we are not members. Taiwan is neither an Annex I nor Annex II party to the Kyoto Protocol, for example, but we are willing to abide by the Protocol. I hereby solemnly declare two things: first, Taiwan has absolutely no wish to become the country where greenhouse gas emissions are increasing at the fastest rate in the world; and second, reducing emissions is something we must do to reduce the impact of natural disasters in our own nation.
The fifteenth session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP-15) will get underway on December 7th in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Taiwan will not be able to attend the conference, but in September we did make it known that we wish to take part in UNFCCC activities in the future, because they are very important to Taiwan.
We are working very hard to conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions. In the year-and-a-half since my administration came to office, energy consumption in Taiwan has been cut by 4.5 terawatt hours. This is equivalent to all the electric power consumed by the 1.87 million people of Tainan County and Tainan City in the course of a year, or to the annual generating capacity of a single medium- to large-size power plant, which is quite significant. At the same time, we have reduced carbon emissions by 2.88 million tons, which is equivalent to the carbon absorption capacity of 8,000 of one of the largest parks in all of Taipei. You can thus see that we have really put forth a serious effort in this area.
Since I took office as president more than a year ago, the Presidential Office where I work has been working to conserve electricity, gasoline, water, and paper, and we've cut our expenditures on each of these items by 10 to 20 percent, saving over 7 million New Taiwan Dollars in the process. In fact, everyone jokingly calls me the "provincial governor," because the Chinese word for "province" is a homonym for "scrimp and save." When future generations look back on our times, we will have nothing to apologize for. I've come here today because I want government officials throughout Taiwan to understand this. I hope that today's event will spur everyone to take the issue of climate change seriously, and that those in the audience from overseas can lend a hand to help Taiwan take part in international activities that benefit all of mankind.