Friday, February 15, 2008

True Costs of Shipping

According to the article in the Guardian, the true costs of shipping are much worse than previously suspected. They include not only the damage to the environment from the massive pollution they cause with oil spills and other toxic leaks, but also an immense addition to global warming, much more than most folks knew or guessed. Well, I sort of guessed.

snippet:
The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study seen by the Guardian.

It calculates that annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO₂, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas.

The report suggests that shipping emissions - which are not taken into account by European targets for cutting global warming - will become one of the largest single sources of man made CO₂after cars, housing, agriculture and industry. By comparison, the aviation industry, which has been under heavy pressure to clean up, is responsible for about 650m tonnes of CO₂emissions a year, just over half that from shipping.


For the rest of this rather damming article, go here.

How many hints does it take till we know that too many creatures have died?

"When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?"

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