Ships are biggest greenhouse problem
Sunday Age's March 4th article 'Ships, not planes, new warming risk' confirms that the shipping industry is having more adverse impacts on the planet than they might care to admit or pay for. As Blue Wedges has long been advocating, it is time the real costs of the shipping industry’s polluting habits is factored into the cost-benefit analysis for the channel deepening project – an analysis which to date has been traditional, simplistic and rudimentary in its approach.
Aside from the shipping industry’s appalling contribution to global warming, they have yet more to answer for. Devastating invasive species such as the Northern Pacific Seastar into Port Phillip Bay and the Fire Ant in
Costs to our communities in attempting to eradicate just these two species alone are hundreds of millions of dollars. Estimated losses to agriculture over 30 years for the Fire Ant are over $6 billion. For the Northern Pacific Seastar, a Department of Primary Industry unpublished report estimated since the approx. 10 years of its invasion it had reduced fish stocks in PP Bay by up to 40%. The value of recreational fishing and its support industries was valued at $260 million p.a. in 2000-01.
The Independent Panel found in 2005 that channel deepening would bestow direct benefits to Victorians over 25 years of only $523 million, whilst costs would be $545 million - NO direct benefit! Recent Age articles suggest project costs have potentially doubled again to $1 billion. Add to these costs shipping's global warming and invasive species contributions and we seem to have an even bigger LOSS on offer in this increasingly unattractive project.
It's also time we thought not only how far our food has travelled from source to plate but how far all our goods have travelled. The further goods travel the more greenhouse gases are produced - and the further they travel by ship it now seems the worse it is. Where's the sense in mining steel in Australia, shipping it to China, and then shipping it back to Australia again transformed into something that we used to manufacture here, whilst also selling and transporting our coal overseas to run their factories?
"It's cheaper that way" did I hear you and VECCI say? Perhaps not. Consider this. A 2001 report from National Institute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR) found that by 2005 it was likely that tariff reductions (which commenced in 1987) would have been responsible for the loss of 100,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector alone, and 200,000 jobs in total would have been lost as a result. More recent studies have apparently confirmed those predictions (The Age 20th April 2006). Those lost jobs have come at a huge direct cost to families and indirect cost to the community. Meanwhile our household debt is approximately 145% of our household income – apparently largely due to our consumption of imports.
Anyway, where’s the morality in producing more greenhouse gases to move goods thousands of kilometres around the world whilst local jobs are lost?
Do we really want to risk the Bay so that we can keep going on this trajectory?
See Sunday 4th March Age article: 'Ships, not planes, new warming risk' at http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/03/03/1172868811080.html
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