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The shipping industry is coming to grips with its egregious carbon footprint, as it has an outsized contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and to the dumping of chemicals into open seas. Already, the global shipping industry contributes about 2 percent of global carbon emissions, about the same as Germany, as the BBC reported.
Yet another endangered southern resident orca is missing, and researchers fear he is dead.
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A major conglomerate in the global shipping industry wants to start a fuel tax to raise money for zero-carbon ships within a decade, as the AP reported.
Thousands of Ships Use 'Cheat Devices' to Dump Toxic Wastewater Into Sea and Bypass Emissions Standards
You might have known that cruise ships are some of the world's worst polluters. Now, there is more disturbing news from the shipping industry thanks to a bombshell investigation that found that global shipping companies have spent billions to equip their ships with "cheat devices" that get around new emissions standards by dumping pollution into the sea rather than the air. The British newspaper The Independent revealed the fraud in an exclusive story.
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By Marlene Cimons
Nearly a century ago, German engineer Anton Flettner launched a ship into the ocean. "Without sails or steam, like a ghost ship, it moved mysteriously through the water with no apparent means of propulsion," according to a 1925 article that appeared in Popular Science Monthly. The ship cruised in silence, without spewing anything into the air. Curiously, two odd-looking, giant spinning cylinders rose from her deck as "the ship plowed its way through the rough waters of the Baltic, at nearly twice its former speed," the article said.
By Verner Wilson II
2018 was a breakthrough year for Arctic conservation work at the International Maritime Organization (IMO). I wrote partly about it in my previous blog. Aside from obtaining internationally recognized routing measures and shipping areas to be avoided (ATBA) in the Bering Sea, IMO also moved forward with regulations to ban the use of Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) in the Arctic.
The United Nations shipping agency also moved to regulate climate-change causing greenhouse gas emissions in the international shipping industry, which is one of the largest emitters of carbon and other atmosphere pollutants. I look forward to continuing that type of work into 2019. And there will be plenty of opportunity for that, as there are a number of IMO subcommittee meetings that will consider pollution reduction and prevention measures. The people who I believe made some of the most significant differences in this work in 2018 were able to come to IMO with me last fall.
By James J. Winebrake and James J Corbett
The International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency that regulates global shipping, is writing new rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions from ships by 2050 as it implements other regulations that will mandate cleaner-burning fuels at sea by 2020.