Just another
news story to help
me breathe
easier.
Taiwan has concerns about airborne mercury and arsenic pollution to raise with China and a great deal of clean-up expertise to offer the polluted mainland, but Beijing's refusal to deal with the island stymies cooperation, Taiwan's environment minister said on Friday.Even worse for Taiwan's 23 million people, said Minister Winston Dang, China's pressure on U.N. agencies and other international organizations to shun the island gives Taiwan few avenues for global cooperation on environmental issues.
"China has to understand that this is not only Taiwan's problem, but that it's a global problem," the head of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration told Reuters.
A high-altitude monitoring station on Taiwan's Jade Mountain detected dramatically higher levels of mercury in the atmosphere due to coal burning and steel manufacturing in China, Dang said, adding he was worried about arsenic as well.
This is one aspect of globalization that I find particularly interesting. Throughout history, we've drawn lines around what is "ours" and said we can do what's good for us within these lines. We didn't have satellite imagery or a integral, undeniable knowledge that what "we" do here hurts "them" over there. This goes for diseases, terrorism, and pollution. As I've mentioned before, that one-third of California's air pollution originates in China:
In California, Oregon and Washington, sulfur from China alone reaches 10 percent to 15 percent of the EPA's allowable levels. Overall, researchers believe a third of California's air pollution (and a fifth of Oregon's) originates in China.If it's effecting California that directly, imagine what it's doing for us in Taiwan.
Then -- back to the original article -- the cereal box, "Beijing propaganda! Beijing propaganda!" part of me (channeling that "inner Michael Turton" in all of us as I think Bent put it):
Taiwan has been divided from mainland China since 1949, when Nationalist forces fled to the island and Mao Zedong's Communists took power in Beijing.Reunification? For once, I would like to read an article that says, "China says the island is a breakaway province, but the PRC flag has never flown over the island." I bet we would start seeing a significant change in the way people view Taiwan if these two little paragraphs that are in nearly every article about Taiwan were more accurate. Making clear that, yes, China does claim sovereignty over Taiwan, but there's no talk of "reunification" -- only unification -- seeing as the PRC never controlled (to my knowledge) any part of Taiwan. Also, Nationalist forces fleeing to Taiwan does not divide Taiwan from "the Mainland," seeing as there were already people on Taiwan before these outside forces came to Taiwan.
China says the island is a breakaway province that must accept reunification and makes Taiwan's acceptance of Beijing's "one China" policy a condition for official talks.
Calm. Calm....
7 comments:
The pollution here in Taiwan, especially air pollution, is one of the reasons I may decide to get me and my family the hell out of here. I once edited a paper about urban air pollution in Taichung. Scary stuff. Compared to other badly polluted cities like L.A., Taichung's air quality was the absolute worst by an order of magnitude.
(channeling that "inner Michael Turton" in all of us as I think Bent put it):
Soon...soon...everyone will be pudgy and balding. Mwahahahahhaha.
No, Michael. Not that Michael Turton.
Note, I said "inner."
I live in Penghu, and was wondering if anyone's ever commissioned a study concerning heavy metal pollution in the Taiwan straits, specifically pertaining to seafood. Penghu seems to have a higher number of people with speech impediments (not just strong accents, but actual slurring of sounds, lisps, that sort of thing), and more than a fair number of the kids my wife teaches seem to be what you'd call "slow". And of course, locally caught seafood is what's on the menu.
Joshua, I don't know. I've done a lot of searches for environmental studies specifically about things like that, and I've yet to come up with anything really concrete.
I've been thinking about it a lot too, because I have a lot of students with problems that I don't see much in the US. For instance, I have several students who are either cross-eyed or have one very lazy eye, which I rarely see in the US. I have no idea, though, if that can be a result of pollution found in the food eaten by a pregnant woman, for instance.
Many of my Taiwanese friends also have serious skin allergies.
But, still, I don't know if any of this has to do with pollution. It's just got me thinking.
It's worth bearing in mind that a large proportion of that stinky air pollution wafting over from the Motherland no doubt originates from Taiwan-owned factories.
I guess you could call that a case of environmental blowback!
That's a really good point, naruwan. This pollution is from factories, I'm assuming, owned by and large by companies from everywhere but China.
Again, that brings in the whole globalization aspect I brought up. China is the world's factory, after all.