True scale of C02 emissions from shipping revealed
Another day, another revelation that knocks the Gateway.
This one is reported in The Guardian.
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.
(I will forgive the typesetter but that should be a subscript 2 not a superscript 2)
The first thing I thought was that if they got the CO2 wrong, they probably got the local air contaminants wrong too – since I think what is happening here is that they underestimated how much oil is being burned.
The UN report also reveals that other pollutants from shipping are rising even faster than CO² emissions. Sulphur and soot emissions, which give rise to lung cancers, acid rain and respiratory problems are expected to rise more than 30% over the next 12 years.
Again that would be called sulphur oxides and particulates here. And the California Air Resources Board has determined that diesel particulate is a human carcinogen
The health implications of shipping emissions are most acute for Britain and other countries bordering the English Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. A recent peer-reviewed study of shipping emissions found world shipping led directly to 60,000 deaths a year.
And of course the Fraser Valley, where the off shore breezes ensure that the soot and sulphur from the stacks of those freighters will waft up the valley and get trapped around Hope.
I do not recall seeing any of the environmental assessment of the port expansion. I do recall hearing that it failed but proceeded anyway. Which, of course, is what you expect in business friendly BC. Much more important that we get some more containers diverted through here instead of Oakland or Seattle, than we reduce the risk of people who live here from diseases like asthma, emphysema, lung cancer or COPD. In fact as an economist I might even work out a few sums. How does the profit from a few more container ships stack up against the increased health care costs and loss of productive work time?
I find the economic arguments in favour of port expansion less than compelling. There actually is not really a lot of new employment or a great deal of new net revenue – and labour shortages here mean that we might think twice about a strategy that depends on finding new truck drivers – since there aren’t enough of those already. But the environmental balance sheet is only negative – even before this new information came to light. Do we really need to poison ourselves just so the Vancouver Port Authority senior staff and Board Members can have bigger pay packets?
