The international community is gearing up for one of the most important meetings on climate change ever held: the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will open in Copenhagen on December 7.

The United States and China recently announced new goals for reducing carbon emissions. Those announcements have sparked new hopes that an international consensus may be possible in Copenhagen.

In an exclusive interview with RTI, Taiwan's vice minister of the environment, Chiau Wen-yan, said that Taiwan has also set goals for reducing carbon emissions:

"President Ma Ying-jeou has, of course, spoken about these goals, which are: returning to 2008 levels between 2016 and 2020; returning to 2000 levels by 2025; and reducing emissions to half of the 2000 level by 2050. We have done our best to create a timetable for reducing carbon emissions, but we have also discovered how difficult that is. In particular, we'll need a joint effort on the part of parties at both the supply and the demand [end of the chain]."

Chiau said that Taiwan's plans are shifting from the policy phase to the action phase. He said that Taiwan would send a group to Copenhagen for the conference. Once new goals are set in Copenhagen, Chiau said, the government would put a timetable for emission reduction into the nation's greenhouse gas reduction laws.