Is it all just gesture politics?

[cromwell]

Cracking down on pollution from cars, that is.

The reason I ask is that someone told me that most of the pollution in the world comes from ships, trains, lorries and planes. Lorries apart I was a bit dubious but it looks as though he may have had a point.

Ships must be the muckiest polluters on the planet.
http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-bi ... world/8182

Less than 20 of the world's biggest ships create more pollution than all the cars in the world combined! That is absolutely staggering. Ships burn "bunker oil". Which seems to be high suplhur content, filthy muck. And we are pointing the finger at people who drive diesel cars!

[TheOstrich]

When I read the title, I thought you were going to refer to Boris Johnson's plan to build a Channel Bridge!

I think it's been widely recognised for some time that cruise ships are serial marine polluters via emissions, hasn't it, even before you get to air pollution. Wasn't there a case recently of a cruise ship caught "cleaning its bunkers" by discharging into the English Channel?

[Workingman]

Do NOT get me started!

I ranted about this way back in 2007ish, but it was not a big thing back then.... climate was, eh?.

These leviathans circle the globe every hour of every day and without them the global economy would collapse - and I do mean "collapse" - so is it any surprise that our wonderful capitalists keep things quiet?

No!

What really bugs me, really, is that the likes of Greenpeace, FotE, WWF and politicians have not jumped on this in a big way. Having said that, I am not so surprised. A few hundreds of ships well out of the way of all the Earth's population are not a big deal.... We car users are an easy target.

A conspiracy?

[AliasAggers]

The real problem, actually, is that the world's population has grown far too large, and a great
proportion of it has adopted lifestyles that will, eventually, adversely affect the environment
to a much greater extent. An acceptable solution will prove difficult to discover and to apply.

[cromwell]

True Aggers. Because adopting a different lifestyle will adversely impact the lifestyle we enjoy; and most people would not want to do that.

[Workingman]

The adoption of a different lifestyle will not be a choice, nature will impose it upon us, possibly as early as our grandchildren's generation.

Dystopia is rapidly approaching and we have not even begun to tinker at the edges to mitigate it. Any surviving descendants will look upon the latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century as the age of irresponsibility.