DONALD Trump signed an executive order late last month, mandating the overhaul of research-integrity policies, to ensure that the federal government promotes “gold standard science”.

This bid to Make Science Great Again has inevitably left some in the scientific community slightly concerned that the order will, in fact, do the opposite, by putting US scientists and science under the thumb of political appointees.

Political realities do not change scientific ones, point out researchers — an argument charismatically embraced by Joe Biden’s climate tsar John Kerry, as he returned to Nor-Shipping for a rabble-rousing call to arms on decarbonisation.

In partisan political times, recognising the scientific truth is more important than ever.

The Trump effect may slow the green transition, but he won’t stop it, Kerry insisted. Renewables will keep getting cheaper, despite Trump’s efforts to slash environment rules.

Kerry has form in these industry pep talks. Two years ago, he turned up with a speech that compared shipping’s equitable transition to sustainable fuels to the D-Day landings in Normandy in the penultimate phase of the Second World War.

It’s not clear whether he succeeded in opening a second front on mainland Europe, but the adoption of the International Maritime Organization’s net zero framework in October would be a significant win for the allied sustainability forces.

The problem with this undoubtedly enthusiast rhetoric is that, while political realities do not change scientific ones, they do still matter.

The falling cost of renewables is a positive indicator and the march of clean tech will, indeed, yield significant improvements on emissions. But all that only highlights the fundamental requirement for regulation.

Those reductions in solar and wind prices were achieved through subsidies from China, a market forcibly extracted from Europe, which was too slow to move ahead with any meaningful political action.

The IMO framework could work, but only if it has strong enough support for zero-carbon fuels come October. That’s a matter of politics, not science. As is the reason that Kerry is addressing Nor-Shipping, rather than the Oval Office, this week.

Oslo is currently brimming with enthusiastic scientists and innovators explaining how we make ammonia and methanol work. But none of that matters — and not a molecule of NH3 will be burned — without a strict set of highly-politicised rules at the next MEPC meeting.

The good news is, we have worked all this out and just need the politicians to make the transition happen.

Kerry has been around this debate, and shipping, long enough now to know the difference between progress and movement. When he was at Nor-Shipping two years ago, he was advocating urgent progress to vigorous applause.

What followed may not have been as urgent as he — or many others — would have liked, but progress happened.

Regardless of whether it is Trump putting the brakes on right now, shipping has proven that progress is possible with the right collaboration between politicians, scientists and industry.

Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List

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