Desinification: KMT-Style

From the Aug 26th edition of the China Post:

Although the annual Mid-Autumn Festival is still some 20 days away, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu called on city residents Monday not to have traditional outdoor barbecues that day, as part of the city's efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

[. . .]

"Barbecuing is absolutely not good for the health and goes against global eco-friendly efforts," he said. "The city government will do its best to stop the public having barbecues in parks, streets or green areas during the Mid Autumn Festival."

Last year, the city government banned barbecues in parks on the holiday, and only a few public venues were opened to members of the public wishing to have barbecues, he explained.

I don't live in Taichung, but I think it's pretty sad that the city government is trying to abolish one of the nicest little holidays in the Chinese Lunar Calendar.  I've been to a few Moon Festival barbecues and a good time is usually had by all.  And really, what are the alternatives?  People have to eat -- if they don't barbecue their food, they're still going to produce CO₂ when they stay indoors and cook their dinner on GAS STOVES.  Or does Hizonner have a plan for turning Taichung into a city of salad-eaters?  Hey, good luck with that.  And good luck when folks start hopping in their cars and NEEDLESSLY BURN GASOLINE so they can light their grills outside city limits.

Charcoal barbecues make lots of nasty smoke -- got it.  So, why not try to encourage people to switch to cleaner electric or gas grills instead?

Naw, that's not as much fun as harassing the local citizenry with badly-needed crime enforcement personnel who've been turned into jack-booted Barbecue Cops for the evening.

(King of the Hill image from TVGuide.com)

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UPDATE (Sep 8/08):  More on this here.  Has some numbers as well:

The association [against charcoal barbecues] cited customs statistics as indicating that Taiwan imported 34 million kilograms of charcoal a year, with 95 percent coming from Indonesia, Malaysia and mainland China. It requires 6 to 10 kilograms of timber to produce one kilogram of charcoal, and one hectare of forestry plantation area can produce 150,000 kilograms of timber, which, in turn, can be used to turn out 15,000 kilograms of charcoal.

Accordingly, to meet Taiwan's annual demand for 34 million kilograms of charcoal, as many as 2,260 hectares of forest need be felled, equivalent to the area of as many as 79 Daan Forest Parks in Taipei, the association spokesman said.

Therefore, without the barbecue activity on the Moon Festival, not only will many trees not be chopped, but carbon dioxide emissions can also be cut significantly, the spokesman continued.

Maybe so, but then a lot of those trees may not get planted at all if there's no market for them in charcoal production:

Farmers using swidden farming (shifting cultivation) methods in Indonesia are increasingly unable to provide sufficient food and cash income to satisfy basic family and community needs. Part of their difficulty is the cost and effort of controlling the invasive grass Imperata cylindrica. Attempts to establish plantations in the grasslands are frequently thwarted by wildfires. [One option is to] reclaim unproductive land infested with imperata grass in Indonesia by assisting cash-poor swidden farmers to establish plantations of trees, especially Vitex pubescens, a native species suitable for charcoal (for which there is a ready cash market).

None of this however answers my question:  If charcoal barbecues are banned in Taiwan, how much CO₂ will be produced when people cook dinner on gas stoves instead?