It is safe to say that few career civil servants, serving or former, have had as much of an impact on Taiwan as Ministry of Transportation and Communications employee-turned-documentary filmmaker Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), who died on June 10.
Since his untimely death in a helicopter crash, there has been an outpouring of grief and tributes to a man who almost single-handedly made it impossible for the average person — or the government — to ignore the devastation wrought by decades of unchecked development, feeble environmental regulations and even feebler enforcement, as well as societal disregard for the nation’s land, rivers, forests and coastline.