Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above Page #3

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In the end, we could only imagine

the original colours of mountains and the sky.

This is a cement mine

on the east coast of Taiwan.

The cement industry has

huge impact on the environment.

A ton of cement

is made from 1.4 tons of limestone,

300 kilos of clay and 60 kilos of silica sand.

In order to get these raw materials,

we cut the beautiful forests into pieces.

But we cannot see such destruction,

because we never go into the mountains.

Furthermore, mining cement

is a highly energy-consuming business.

To produce a ton of cement,

you need 112.9 kWh of electricity

and 132.7 kilos of coal.

It also emits large amounts of CO2.

But cement is needed in our lives.

Mining seems to be a necessary evil.

We produce more than

19M tons of cement every year.

Nearly half of it is exported.

We turn our beautiful mountains and forests

into cement and sell it to others.

Then we leave the destroyed environment

to our next generation.

In addition to cement,

the amount of sand and gravel mined

is even more astonishing.

More than 100 million tons of sand and gravel

is produced every year,

of which around 60% is mined illegally.

After this illegal mining,

a huge crater is left in the ground.

The more terrifying fact is that some

heartless businessmen will fill it with garbage,

causing another environmental disaster.

In fact, the amount of sand and gravel

washed down from the river is large enough.

There is no need to mine illegally.

It's just because the businessmen

want to lower the cost,

so they don't want to do it legally.

If profit tops the priorities, who would

care about the environmental damage?

Under the banner of economic development,

industrial parks mushroomed in Taiwan.

We see chimneys erected all over the place.

When there is no space left in the land,

we fight against the sea for more land.

We turn the beautiful coast into

artificial islands like those in the fantasy world.

This is a giant chimney of 250 meters in height.

The Taichung Power Plant

Taichung Power Plant

is the largest coal-fired power station

in the world.

Without it,

we won't have enough electricity to meet

the industrial and domestic demands.

However,

it's also the largest CO2 emitter in the world.

In order to send electricity to every corner,

we built countless pylons

which spread across rivers and mountains.

The power company spends lots of money

on maintaining the network

to ensure a steady supply of electricity.

Nevertheless, amid the green in the mountains,

the pylons with warning signs saying

"High voltage. Keep Out."

Are hardly in harmony with the surroundings.

But these densely built pylons

play an important role in our comfortable lives.

Right here,

we see the contradictory nature and conflicts

between industrial development

and environmental protection.

For example, we enjoy the speed and

convenience of the Taiwan High Speed Railway.

But all our daily activities are

supported by large amounts of electricity.

We can communicate with

people in faraway places

and build economic relations with

the rest of the world.

But what is hidden in the figure of

our economic growth

is the rapidly-increasing consumption of energy.

In recent years, the high-tech industry

has become the main player in Taiwan's exports.

Moreover, it's become

the symbol of Taiwan's competitiveness.

But this high-earning industry is also

a high-energy-consuming industry.

According to the statistics,

the IT industry's need makes up 16% of

the total electricity consumption in Taiwan.

To resolve the conflicts between

energy demand and environmental protection

is definitely not a question of

who is wrong and who is right.

More importantly,

it's not a fight between different ideologies.

It's a serious issue everyone

has to face rationally.

In fact,

the contradiction and conflicts we're facing

aren't only between

energy demand and environmental protection.

We face a similar problem

in the basic need for housing.

When the land in the plains is in shortage,

we fight against the hills for more land.

However,

the houses always increase at

a rate faster than the revision of the regulations.

In the old days, people said

"Houses rise from the ground".

Now, we say "Houses rise from the hills".

An old nursery goes like this.

"A brook runs in front of my home.

A hill stands at the back."

Now what lies in front of our houses

is not a brook,

but a collapsed slope full of danger.

What we care about a house is

how much it costs each square meter

rather than if it will still

be safe for us to live in tomorrow.

The contradictory nature and conflicts between

material comforts and environmental protection

have actually existed in our lives for a long time.

We say

we want to save energy and protect the Earth

but produce large amounts of garbage

at the same time.

Maybe you've no idea that

the amount of garbage we produce in Taiwan

is one of the largest in the world.

We have to deal with

7.4 million tons of garbage each year.

Most of the landfill sites are

situated near the sea

where no one pays attention or protests against.

On many of these sites,

the precautions aren't taken carefully,

so when the waves lap against the shore,

they take the garbage back to the sea.

Drifting with the currents,

the garbage spreads along the coast.

In the past, due to a lack of funding,

some city councils buried

the garbage near the cities.

Now they pose such a threat to public health that

we have to spend more time and money

digging it out and treating it properly.

But the irony is

when we're dealing with the old garbage,

we keep producing even more

as if as long as we couldn't see it,

the problem of garbage didn't exist.

This is our island, our home.

For several generations,

we have lived

in this land poor in natural resources

but rich in natural disasters.

Nevertheless, we've worked so hard to

create an unprecedentedly flourishing economy.

Meanwhile, this island has been nurturing

generations of people with her flesh and blood.

Like a mother who has borne too many children,

gradually,

her body is exhausted and in great pain.

But she never complains and remains silent,

offering her children whatever they ask for.

Only when her children greedily squeeze

the last drop of milk out of her,

can we hear her moan softly in agony.

People often say that

if it wasn't for the wealth and happiness

of our children,

our hard work would be meaningless.

Sometimes I feel that

the so-called hard work is an excuse for pillage.

We pillage large amounts of resources

from this land to satisfy our endless desire.

But we never thought

and probably will never admit that

what we leave our next generation

is the aftermath of looting.

History has shown us that

the peak of a boom is often

the beginning of the decline.

Is the same worrying crisis looming

behind the boom we're enjoying at the moment?

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