Monday - December 06, 2010

Doing It The Wrong Way

This looks like some major arm twisting to me. A kind of extortion, similar to Jesse Jackson’s actions against businesses. Or it is simple common sense?

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has declared war on the shipping industry with a new climate change initiative.

source

The Carbon War Room, an independent venture, wants to see an efficiency rating on every ocean going vessel to help clean up the industry. It is the first of many industries being targeted by the group who believe climate change can be solved through business rather than government summits. Ministers from 190 countries are into their second week of negotiations in Cancun, Mexico with no sign of a global deal.

Sir Richard told Sky News: “It is up to us business leaders to help those politicians deliver, they haven’t delivered so far, if they don’t deliver we can’t afford to wait. “It is up to us to get our house in order and make sure the world is safe for our children and our grandchildren.”

While shipping is a relatively clean mode of transport it accounts for over a billion tonnes of C02 a year - if it were a country it would be the world’s sixth biggest emitter. Carbon War Room believe the sector could be made at least 30% more efficient by upgrading and refitting ships. Their website http://www.shippingefficiency.org has catalogued 60,000 of the world’s ocean going vessels, with the cleanest rated ‘A’ and the worst polluters scoring ‘G’.

Peter Boyd, who is leading the project, explained: “You can go online and see an estimate of how clean or dirty the ship is. Whether you are an owner and you want to display that you are an A grade ship, whether you are a port or if you are a brand like Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury’s, you can start to pick your fleet depending on how efficient it is.”

The ratings are estimates but Carbon War Room believes there is only a one to two percent margin of error.

Industry experts welcome the move although they say it currently paints a very general picture.

Dr Simon Walmsley of WWF International told Sky News the ratings would provoke an industry reaction “and hopefully get them around the table to discuss how this can be a more accurate representation.”

“If that happens this will be fantastic, as these sort of rankings are very helpful for both customers and consumers.”

Right-o. So we’ve got a bunch of greenies here, or what? Or is it real? It shouldn’t be all that hard to figure out: ( mass of freight cargo hauled X distance traveled ) ÷ ( fuel used X weather factor ) = Efficiency Rating, and that rating implies a pollution level. Well, ceteris paribus. Which it never really is, because things are only equal in Economics 101. In the real world they never are.

One problem though: if you don’t factor in time, then sailboats will appear to be the big winners here. And if you do factor in time, you’ll soon see that the most gigantic ships are the most efficient ones, even though they pollute the most on a per ship basis. Not only that, but proper analysis will show that only 3 or 4 routes across the seas are the most efficient. And anyone who knows a bit about logistics will see the risks and problems with shipping One Big Order from point A to point B when you actually need 12 little orders to go to points C, D, E ... N. So secondary transport costs and warehousing have to figure into the equation to make it meaningful, and they never will (each company’s needs and locations are different). So this is a worthless metric. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

On the third hand, no matter which way you slice it, this greenie rating will show that in terms of fuel efficiency and lower emissions, nuclear powered civilian owned cargo ships are the way to go. And that will blow their minds. Or cause them to argue for Obama and the One-Worlders to now take over the shipping industry.

But it does rather look like arm twisting to me: “government isn’t getting the job done, so we’ll turn to the market and let them solve it ... by publishing a list of ratings we dreamed up, causing a big ruckus and frightening dogs and little children, then we’ll twist the clean-air-guilt screws on retail businesses, then we’ll have a big meeting with all the shipping companies and see if we can’t figure out a way to make our ratings, you know, actually accurate.” Say what??

On the fourth hand, all of this is predicated on the belief that shipping customers could give a flying fart about the emissions generated by the ships they hire to bring in their cargoes. Seems to me that the only thing that matters to them is the volumetric time to cost ratio: I need a lot of my stuff and I need it right now = pay more, vs I’ll take a little and I can wait = pay less. I guess Branson thinks he’s going to run millions and millions of ad campaigns that say “Oh noes, the Dover Rover Cheese Company imported a barrel of rennet on a dirty boat! Don’t buy their products!” and that will actually have meaning? Oh please. After the 5th ad for the 3rd product for the boycott de jour NOBODY will pay it any attention whatsoever. And all any company will have to do is to bring in ONE load of stuff per year on the M/V Mr. Clean, and make an ad about it. The rest of the time they can explain away using the SS Dirty Birdy as “spreading the wealth around” to “developing third world economies” and get a total pass.

This is a dipshit idea Sir Richard. Now go wash your hair, you look like a greasy teenager.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/06/2010 at 08:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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