The Environment With Regards to Auto Shipping
There is nothing quite like a cargo ship - they are both enormous and impressive to watch. They resemble moving mountains along the surface of the sea. They are not the usual battleship grey of some huge ships. They carry impossibly high stacked loads of bright blue, orange and green containers. On a load such as this one, your luxury German car is carefully loaded and ready to disembark at its given destination overseas. An equal array of bright-hued cranes, also impressive in their enormity, will unload your new baby onto the dock. You are a satisfied customer knowing that that expensive car was shipped overseas by an efficient shipping company and saved you money and hassle by doing so.
The shipping industry, unfortunately, is not all wine and roses. There are many environmental issues associated with the shipment of domestic and foreign diesel-powered cargo. There are many problems arising from the fairly new shipping industry while it continues to grow and prosper. Solutions to these problems are yet to be incorporated into the industry. As late as 2008, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) held a meeting with an agenda of greenhouse gas emissions from all ships, but particularly cargo ships.
Ships discharge “ballast water”. Huge cargo carriers like the ones described above discharge oceans of ballast water. This water is taken in when cargo is unloaded or when previous loads of ballast water are discharged. When more cargo is brought on board more ballast water is discharged. The problem is that with huge carriers like these, their course usually lines across international routes: water is often pumped in in one coastal region and pumped out much later in an entirely different one.
Our friend anxiously awaiting the unloading of his foreign-born masterpiece of auto engineering does not give this a thought. He should and so should the rest of us inhabitants of this planet. The world demand for foreign made goods is causing upheaval and the deterioration of our environment. Into that ballast water go plants, animals, bacteria and viruses. They are pumped into the ship’s tanks either alive or not in their native habitat. They will be discharged from the tanks either dead, alive, mutated, or increased in number because of procreation en route. All of them will be totally out of their element in their new home, becoming litter, vermin or invasive species. This results in utter chaos and destruction of the marine ecosystems.
Gasoline used for car transportation over land should be an environmental advantage because the huge carriers carrying many autos in a single load do cut down on the gasoline that would have been consumed by each of those vehicles being driven separately across a vast expanse of land. Unfortunately, this saves only money not the environment. This is good for the company, they earn money, and good for the customer, they save money. Resources are happily circulated and the environment becomes ever more depleted.
If fewer people drove their personal vehicle those same long distances, the auto transportation industry would still continue to thrive because of the car manufacturing and car handling industry. The automotive industry is undergoing increasing expansion and growth because of newly developing third world countries. So more cars are in demand, which means more transportation by land, sea and air and more contribution to environmental disasters.
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