An alien from Mars observing our two-day National Energy Conference in Taipei would likely have thought it was a meeting on “new economic opportunities in energy.” During the entire meeting not one presenter, and few of the hundred or so comments from the attendees, expressed any sense of crises or took issue with any of the basic premises of the meeting. It was, contrary to what Premier Frank Hsieh said it would not be in his opening address, “a great big celebration” (大拜拜).

The conference, the first of its kind since the DPP took over the government in 2000 (the last national energy conference was held in 1998), was also remarkable for its lack of creativity and its head-in-the-sand approach to global warming. The starting point for the conference appeared to be “sustainability” in the sense of sustaining the policies and practices that were formulated by the thinkers that supported government and industry (and political party – KMT Inc. until 2000) working hand in glove, and operating under the assumption that Taiwan is just a temporary resting place until China can be recovered.

Throughout the conference there was no questioning from the organizers (Ministry of Economic Affairs) and presenters (industry representatives, professors) that Taiwan must keep the GDP on track, we must continue with constant growth, or that we should sustain conventional metrics of growth or what we perceive that growth should be. The more I listened the more I thought about the environmental tragedies that are so pervasive throughout Taiwan and how our chief metric for economic well being, the gross domestic product, or GDP, might have something to do this.

Ralph Nader was one of the first to note that every time there is an automobile accident the GDP goes up. The Canadian Media Foundation has done a number of television ads to the same effect: every time there is a forest felled, a cancer patient diagnosed, an oil spill, there is a corresponding positive effect on the economy when that economy has the GDP as its primary indicator.

Why do we continue to use gross domestic product to measure whether things are going well or poorly, or more to the point for this conference, to judge whether a means for addressing global warming and Kyoto is viable? The following from the internet (dragonknight.com) could be a description of the debate over the economics of energy in Taiwan.

Two brilliant young economists, Ho and Wu, loved to debate serious and complex economic issues. Having just finished dinner they went for a walk. As they were just getting into a discussion about the latest method of mathematical analysis they spotted a pile of dog excrement on the sidewalk before them. Ho said to Wu, “if you will eat that, I will give you fifty million dollars.” “Hmmm, fifty million is not an insignificant sum,” thought Wu as he took out paper and pencil to calculate the “economics” of the proposition. It didn’t take long before he exclaimed, “I’ll eat it!,” did the deed and collected the fifty million from Ho. They continued on their stroll.

It wasn’t long before our star economists spotted another pile. Wu was feeling a little nauseous and resentful, with every stomach grumble and burp reminding him of the rather humiliating “sacrifice” he had just made, while Ho was also not completely content, thinking about how he was out fifty million. Wu then made then made Ho the identical offer whereby Wu pulled out his calculator, and using a different set of “mathematical equations” came up with the same economic analysis, “Let the feast begin!”

Ho and Wu were now feeling a little silly, they were both in the same financial position as before, but they had each suffered the degrading and unpleasant experience of consuming a pile of dog shit. Baffled by it all, they sought an explanation from their economics Professor, the star consultant to national governments throughout the world.

After hearing their account, the eminent professor thought for a while, calling upon all the theory that underlie the great economies of the modern world.

Suddenly, he smiled, and silently held up his forefinger. Facing the curious students, the professor said proudly, “You two should receive an award! With such little effort you have added 100 million dollars to our national economy!”

An oversimplification? Perhaps, but it is this kind of analysis that is starting to take hold in a number of universities around the world. Moreover, if we look at those other aspects of the “car wreck economy” like the way suicide, divorce, epidemic illness, domestic violence, murder and incarceration seem to have a correlation with economic growth (as measured by their GDP) in the United States and Taiwan, perhaps our government and the “experts” would take another look at the energy issue from the starting point not of GDP, but rather from a point that could bring forth more interesting, creative, more sustainable and more broadly acceptable solutions. Otherwise I dread to think where we will be when the next national energy conference is held.

Time to Question Assumptions (2): Energy

Against the background of developments in “cold fusion” several decades ago there was talk of “energy too cheap to meter,” a phrase that seems to come up in the context of nuclear energy time and again. An unlimited supply of cheap, clean and stable energy - everyone’s dream, and especially attractive to the imported energy dependent Taiwanese as we conclude these two days of discussions on global warming, responses to Kyoto, keeping a balance between the environment and the economy, and jump-starting a host of new business opportunities.

Allow me to digress. Humans first inhabited Taiwan about 15,000 years ago. Paleolithic, Neolithic peoples flourished throughout the island over these millennia and today Taiwan is graced with traces of these original human inhabitants, the approximately 2% of our population comprised of twelve recognized tribes and a number of asyet unrecognized indigenous peoples.

Digressing even further to about 2.5 million years ago, the land mass we know as Taiwan, for what was probably the third time, emerged from the Pacific Ocean through the collision of Philippine and Eurasian continental plates. That uplifting continues today, as does the gradual northeasterly drift of Taiwan, both phenomena explaining in part Taiwan’s high mountains and geologic unpredictability. In this environment of severe instability over four thousand plants and at least 400,000 insects and other animal species developed such that Taiwan is said to be second in the world in terms of diversity based on land mass of a country.

While records of Chinese visits to the island go back to the 11th century, outside contact really began with the Dutch and Portugese in the 17th century, followed by the Chinese migrations, Japanese invasions, and other incursions by a wide range of other opportunists and adventurers, including the author. Without exception, these visitors, upon arrival in Taiwan, were struck with the island’s natural abundance andbeauty.

We could thus say that these indigenous plants, people and other animals managed very well in Taiwan for quite some time.

So, in the space of 400 years, the western and eastern cultures have taught the native Taiwanese some serious lessons about civilization, technology and, of course, about energy. All this within a period that  amounts to about .016% of the time Taiwan has existed as an island, or less than 3% of the time that Taiwan was “managed” by indigenous peoples using low or no technology andminimum amounts of energy, at least in the senses of those words “technology” and “energy” that we use today.

We have had what has amounted to an island-wide, 400 year-long energy blowout party during which the “new Taiwanese” (Europeans, Chinese, Japanese) have shown the natives how things can be with no holds barred on the burdens we place on the global environment, and with no limits to what we can achieve when “energy” is cheap and technology is abundant.

The scorecard today? Half of Taiwan’s rivers are seriously polluted, nearly all are dammed or are threatened with numerous water diversion projects (dams, irrigation, etc.), we have the highest population density in the world if the inhabitable mountainous areas are excluded, the world’s highest density of nuclear power plants, second highest use of cement per capita, one of the highest levels of species extirpation in the world due to over-building and habitat destruction, over 30 percent of our ocean shore is covered in cement or by one of the 240 fishing ports, and in the meantime, suicide, divorce, crime, cancer and mental illness are rapidly rising.

Any connection between these unfortunate attributes of modern society and our excessive use of “energy” and “technology”?

When humans have had access to limitless amounts of the kinds of “energy” that have propelled industrial revolution and the conquest and assimilation of indigenous peoples around the world, the record has not been good. Of course establishing a “cause and effect” relationship between the “unmetered” energy that Taipower gives to the Tao people of Orchid Island so that they can keep their air-conditioners running day and night – regardless of whether anyone is at home – and the demise of their culture, is not easy to do. But other than because some company’s public relations department tells us so, or because some government official being paid off by that company supports the company’s PR, why should we continue to believe the message implicit in every government and business utterance that the more energy we have, the happier we will be, or the better it will be for society?

The Tao of Orchid Island suffered near complete devastation of their traditional culture when their original homes were bulldozed at the insistence of Madame Chiang Kaishek so that they could live in what she believed were “decent” homes made of concrete and rebar. Further blows came with the storage of Taipower’s nuclear waste on the island in what was supposed to have been a canning factory. One wonders what is next for the Tao people after a few years of “free energy.”

So we ask the sponsors and the presenters of the National Energy Conference: Based on the record of Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Japanese to date, do we really want more of this stuff in cheap and unlimited quantities?

If we were to tap cheap, inexhaustible energy, … it would be “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child”.
如果發現了又便宜又用之不完的能源，對人類來說就像是「把機關槍給不懂事的小孩子玩」一樣危險