THE problem with that unrestricted greenery that finds itself so fashionable these days is that it runs the perpetual risk of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
The European Community Shipowners’ Association makes this elementary point in its valuable contribution to the continuing debate over the International Maritime Organization’s latest proposals to cap emissions of sulphur from the engines of ships.
According to ECSA, caving in to the ever more strident green lobby on this question will actually increase atmospheric sulphur content, as cargoes are switched to road transport after shortsea shipping is forced to price itself out of the market.
Of course the technicalities of this dispute are still contested. Intertanko, for one, finds itself in the opposite camp.
It is in the interests of all Lloyd’s List readers, both as participants in the collective enterprise of shipping and as residents of planet earth, that the industry sets down tough but achievable goals in reducing pollution, and then complies with them.
But judgements on this matter must never be hasty. If we are to have controls on the emissions of pollutants, they must be controls that work.
Well-intentioned knee-jerk attempts at regulation, before the practicalities have properly been considered, can create a perverse dynamic that leaves all of us worse off than we were originally.
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