President promotes tree-planting to reduce carbon dioxide

Speaking at a tree-planting activity in Taipei County, Ma said the government has been promoting a reforestation project that has the goal of reclaiming 60,000 hectares of forest over eight years.

With Taiwan's carbon dioxide emissions having decreased by 4.4 percent in 2009, the government hopes to further decrease the emissions by 5 percent during the 2016-2020 period, Ma went on.

The president noted that the concept of planting trees has existed in Chinese culture since the time of Mencius.

In 1894, Sun Yat-sen -- who later became the founding father of the Republic of China -- wrote to Ching Dynasty Prime Minister Li Hung-chang urging him to promote the planting of trees, Ma said.

In 1924, the ROC government initiated a large-scale reforestation project as part of efforts to prevent flooding, he continued, adding that modern people should follow the examples of Sun and Mencius and continue to plant trees to create a better living environment for future generations.

Council of Agriculture (COA) Chairman Chen Wu-hsiung noted that trees not only can green and beautify the environment but also can absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

According to the Forestry Bureau under the COA, one tree can absorb 5-10 kg of carbon dioxide, while 112 trees can together remove the amount of carbon dioxide produced by one air conditioner in a year.

If the country's 23 million people were each to plant a single tree, those trees would together clear the carbon dioxide released by 200,000 air conditioners in a single year, the bureau said.

On the sidelines of the activity, however, a group of environmentalists from Taipei City created a disturbance, protesting against what they said was Ma's killing of numerous old trees during his terms as Taipei mayor and urging him to "stop putting on a show."

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