Questioning the carbon craze: Cursory enquiry shows little evidence to back a real need for CO2 eradication
 Too many assumptions have been made in the absence of evidence and analysis about the drive towards a carbon free world that supposedly lies ahead for international shipping.
The UN's International Maritime Organisation (IMO), widely assumed to be a regulatory authority, when it is nothing of the sort, seeks to implement measures to reduce shipping's carbon footprint and cut emissions intensity to 40 per cent below 2008 levels by 2030.
And is doing so transfers the day-to-day running of ships and how they are powered over to the control of bureaucrats.
Such an object is considered to be an unquestioned good when it is difficult to find reasons to say so given the absence of evidence to justify such a draconian measures.
Consider for a moment what Google says when asked upfront about the harm done by CO2 emissions and one is underwhelmed by the answer.
"They cause climate change by trapping heat, and they also contribute to respiratory disease from smog and air pollution. Extreme weather, food supply disruptions, and increased wildfires are other effects of climate change caused by greenhouse gases."
Pretty thin gruel that hardly justifies Greta Thunberg's temper tantrums. Moreover, many of these claims, contained in Al Gore's 2006 documentary "Inconvenient Truth" have been expertly disputed, refuted, discounted or disproved for lack of evidence. Claims that global temperature changes attributed to carbon dioxide pollution have been widely dismissed with counter claims that it contributes to the greening of the planet and reverses what was once increasing desertification.
Increases in wild fire outbreaks have been attributed to faulty forestry management practices as much as to CO2 or air pollution in general. And despite fashionable claims to the contrary, there is no corelation with global warming to extreme weather events. How food supply chains are affected by CO2 is a mystery. No details are provided to explain how that works. Perhaps, carbon dioxide increases plant growth that it creates "invasive crops" that disrupts food supply markets.
Bureaucratic activists now fan fashionable fears into infernos with young people, given days off school to demonstrate in the streets to save the planet, led by social activists and highly politicised school teachers in Greta Thunberg's Children's Crusade.
Bloomberg essayist David Fickling says "After decades of resistance, the IMO is finally implementing measures to reduce shipping's carbon footprint. It wants to cut total carbon pollution by 2050 falling to half of 2008's levels. From the start of 2023, all ships will have to report their emissions and submit plans to improve if they're underperforming.
"That sounds like good news, but the shipping industry is notoriously conservative and the IMO tends to be dominated by the industry it regulates," Mr Fickling writes, allowing, a growingly popular false assumption that the IMO is a regulator, when it is a merely forum in which regulations are discussed and agreed upon, but can be changed not by UN agency, but by sovereign states like any other treaty according to the national interest.
And are these developments "good news", as Mr Fickling suggests. He admits that these measures are fearfully expensive. Alternate fuels are neither cheap nor abundant. What Mr Frickling overlooks is that shipping has traditionally been cost averse. It's object since Noah's Ark has been go get cargo from A to B at the least expense. And while in the thrall of the world according to Greta Thunberg, he is cheering on mandates that impose more costs without any appreciable benefits.
Says Mr Frickling: "The regulations at present are largely voluntary and in line with what shipowners are already doing for cost-management purposes. Some of the biggest contributions will come from simple measures such as slowing the speed of ships on the open ocean and cleaning their hulls more regularly rather than any revolution in the way ships are fueled."
His, and indeed the eco-bureaucrat's best argument, is that with the increase in containership size, from 500 TEU in 1970s to 24,000 TEU in 2020s, and the shrinkage of the ship's crew from 40 to 20, the cost of shipping of a single stock-keeping unit (SKU) is a fraction of one per cent what it was back then.
True enough. But what is forgotten is that back in the 1970s, when 95 per cent of the global container trade was transatlantic, only affluent consumers bought imports. One of the selling points of the container in a break-bulk shipping world was that is was largely pilfer proof.
Thus, this correctly identified cost saving meant that cheaper goods could now be shipped from affordable sources production in the third world. This changed the nature of buyers and sellers of imports worldwide. While the rich continued to account for the dollar volume as they did in the past, the bulk of the tonnage shifted to downmarket buyers, as much of the volume was cheap apparel, footwear, toys and household appliances, was destined downmarket.
The exception is this virtuous development was its interuption from the exceptionally silly Covid scare fostered and currated by a largely female healthcare bureaucracy. That caused needless disruption in supply chains causing shortages when there needn't have been any, and creating undeserved profits, with their Chicken Little Sky is Falling deliberately fostered panic when the casualty rate did not justified the fuss.
What such panicky attitudes still puts at risk today is the healthy progress of our economic biophere of big ships, small crews, and low wage factories, as well as low wage consumers. This could be so easily be destroyed knocked out of kilter by the imposition new prohibitive costs - entirely created by bureaucratic fiat without economic necessity.
And if the fuel costs and the ship restrictions mean that SKU prices rise to the point where factories cannot produce them in sustainable volumes, that means they are no longer produced. That leads to layoffs, and layoffs lead to less production. Less production leads to fewer SKUs filling containers, which leads to fewer container being filled, which leads to mega ships not being filled, which makes their mega nature unsustainable especially as they must burn more costly CO2-free fuel.
Given rising inflation levels, fueled by government's anti-poverty stimulus spending, fewer SKUs were purchased with fresh costs being added along the way as eco-minded port authorities insist that only late-model electric trucks can legally pick up and deliver and only eco-fuel powered trucks and trains can legally carry cargo inland, so that still fewer people can purchase things the world wants to buy and sell. |
