I spent part of today catching up on the proposed carbon emission changes in the shipping industry. There have been proposals agreed to introduce a mandatory system of control with the goal of reducing emissions to 40% of the 2008 values within 10 years.
This major step is the proposal to make systems mandatory – to require every large ship to compare themselves to a fixed standard – to provide for “must do better” markings that will require ships to improve efficiency. It also has a mandatory review to make sure it will achieve the 40% reduction. First decisions are due early November, further improvements are possible.
Environmental groups have complained and want to block this proposal because it isn’t good enough and would allow emissions to increase over the next 10 years (although 40% lower than 2008 does not sound like an increase to me) and it is urgent that we make changes.
I find it hard to accept doing nothing is good and doing something is bad, but that seems to be where we are. I have often said I would rather change multi-nationals rather than destroy them. When you have large multi-nationals you can make major changes through one company, but if you dismantle them you end up needing to change the behaviour of many more companies to make a difference.
As I said elsewhere there is a saying in emergency response that not deciding to do something is deciding to do nothing. So my message to the groups saying they want to prevent the improvements being introduced by the shipping industry – you are in fact choosing to do nothing – and to me that is unacceptable.