One ear, nose, and throat doctor told me that whenever foreigners come to Taiwan, they all eventually end up having to go see a doctor, because their nose just isn't used to the pollution. I've been trying to get a shot of a scooter with the thick black smoke coming out the exhaust. This multiplied by millions of scooters, and Taiwan's air is a pretty nasty thing to walk through.
There is even a fun way to freak out any foreigner who has just arrived in Taiwan. At the end of just a normal day, you tell them to wipe their face with a wet white towel, and they will see so much black dirt on the towel. I don't know what's worse, knowing that all that scooter exhaust is sitting on your face all day, or that you are constantly breathing it all in.
One area of China has solved this problem though. A city in china called Xiamen, is where most Taiwanese' ancestors came from, and in this city people can only have electric scooters. So not only is there no pollution, but there is also no noise as well. You haven't had a great night's sleep until you've been to taiwan and hear somebody on a loud broken scooter flying down the road late at night and waking you up.
Unfortunately Xiamen's mandate will probably never happen here. Scooters are big business here, with possibly more scooters than people. And with so many industries geared towards them, it would be a huge blow to the economy if suddenly gas scooters were outlawed. This is even ignoring the gas lobby.
But I did see something that brought a little hope to my heart...errr...lungs. This electric vehicle charging station. It's the first one i've ever seen here and granted it's at the technology university. but still it gave me some hope that in the future I won't have to walk through a cloud of poison every time I step outside. Granted by the time that happens it will be so far in the future that my consciousness has been transferred into the body of a robot, so breathing is no longer an issue. It will be more of an issue for my clones. Man technology really is running rampant in the future.
