The Int’l Community Has Slapped the Face of the Tsai Gov’t Twice for its Energy Policies

 The Int’l Community Has Slapped the Face of the Tsai Gov’t Twice for its Energy Policies

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

December 20, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The international community in recent days consecutively slapped the face of the Tsai government twice for its energy policies. First, in the "Climate Change Performance Indicators" (CCPI) released by the just concluded UN Climate Summit, Taiwan ranked "third to the last" among the 61 countries assessed, better only than the United States and Saudi Arabia, explaining that Taiwan thoroughly failed in carbon emission reduction performance. Secondly, major EU member states have recently agreed to include nuclear energy into "green transformation", becoming a link in resolving the issue of carbon emissions; it hoped that all countries would use nuclear energy to realize carbon neutralization before 2050.

Of these two slaps, the first is based on the assessment of substantive performance in different countries, negating Taiwan’s carbon reduction effects in the past year in coping with global climate change, which was extremely poor indeed. In the 61 countries assessed, Taiwan ranked "third-to-last"; this ranking, for the Tsai government, which endlessly bragged about its achievements in energy transformation, was, of course, an egregious embarrassment. The second slapping is that after many years of hardships and setbacks, member states of the EU finally turned back to cleanse the bad name of "nuclear energy", admitting that it was an effective tool in resolving the problem of carbon emissions, requiring all member states to include it in the energy structure as a link of the "green trade".

The goal of a "nuclear-free homeland" 2025 advocated by Tsai Ing-wen is fundamentally an electoral strategy, and not an energy policy adopted through profound pondering and meticulous calculations. Disregarding the limitations and inadequacies of the objective domestic environment, she actively started to push for it. For this purpose, she even "demonized" all those professionals who advocated a gradual approach by maintaining of a certain proportion of nuclear power, pinning on them "immoral" labels, accusing them of ulterior motives, and not loving Taiwan. Thus, as a result of fool-hearted obstinacy, she gradually led Taiwan down a road of the use of massive coal-burning and massive emissions of carbon dioxide; thus, we have fallen into the dark dungeon of being "third to the last" in the world.

Tsai Ing-wen often brags about herself, saying how good she was at "connecting with the world"; in this case, when facing the two consecutive slaps in the face by the international community, how should she revise her nuclear-free policy that endanger the health of the people? The DPP has two totems, "plebiscites" and "anti-nuclear". The former, as a bird, has been shut in an iron cage, and how much more value of utilization does the latter have left?

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