{"id":518176,"date":"2010-04-06T14:02:37","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T18:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3263"},"modified":"2010-04-06T14:02:37","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T18:02:37","slug":"to-cut-emissions-taiwan-urges-citizens-to-worship-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/518176","title":{"rendered":"To cut emissions, Taiwan urges citizens to worship online"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eenews.net\/climatewire\/2010\/04\/06\/8\/\" >Climatewire:<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20100402-taiwanese-told-worship-online-help-environment\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/files\/imagecache\/aef_ct_wire_image\/images\/afp\/photo_1270200143657-1-0.jpg\" align=\"left\" width=\"213\" height=\"144\" \/><\/a>In a move to protect the environment, Taiwan last week urged its  citizens to honor the dead by going online rather than burning incense  and ritual money.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of yesterday&#8217;s Tomb Sweeping Festival, an ethnic Chinese  holiday during which worshippers visit the graves of their ancestors to  burn incense and paper gifts, the government called on its citizens to  consider the environment.<\/p>\n<p>The practice of burning incense and paper gifts for ancestors comes  from Taoism. Followers believe that burning paper products will keep  their ancestors comfortable in the afterlife. But burning paper money  releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide, as well as benzene,  methylbenzene and ethylbenzene, which can cause cancer and other  diseases.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We can now choose to pay homage to our ancestors in a modern and  environmentally friendly way by worshipping online or donating the money  meant for the offerings to charities,&#8221; said the Environmental  Protection Administration in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Environmental agencies have also offered to collect paper money from  households and temples, then burn it in state incinerators that can cut  emissions and clean the exhaust (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/environment\/taiwanese-urged-to-worship-online-to-protect-environment-1935981.html\">AFP\/London  <em>Independent<\/em><\/a>, April 5). <strong>&#8211; JP<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3263&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"E-mail this, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_3263\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Share This<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Climatewire: In a move to protect the environment, Taiwan last week urged its citizens to honor the dead by going online rather than burning incense and ritual money. Ahead of yesterday&#8217;s Tomb Sweeping Festival, an ethnic Chinese holiday during which worshippers visit the graves of their ancestors to burn incense and paper gifts, the government [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}