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The main reason it was done was because all the manufacturing is in China. All those ships bring things here and it was intended to make the trip back more effi
by snarf21 7y ago
The main reason it was done was because all the manufacturing is in China. All those ships bring things here and it was intended to make the trip back more efficient economically by shipping them back full as well. I'm all for less plastic but this is also just a larger issue of consumerism. We need to buy and ship less but that is a cultural change that seems unlikely (unfortunately).
- satya71 7y agoCultural change happens when the externalities are priced in. See Denmark and Netherlands for example. The biking and public transport culture is a direct consequence of pricing in road maintenance, congestion, and other externalities into the price of cars and gas.
- Thlom 7y agoNot really. People in Denmark (Copenhagen mostly) and the Netherlands cycle and take public transport because it is the easiest and most convenient option. If it was the price of car use we should see the same effect in f.ex Norway, but we don’t.
- munificent 7y agoIn Denmark, new cars are taxed at 150% of the price of the tax. You pay more in taxes than the entire price of the car.
- radicalbyte 7y agoIn The Netherlands it's 40-50% for most cars yet big cars are still seen as a status symbol. Thankfully the cycling infrastructure here is fantastic so I can almost always use my bike :)
- WalterBright 7y ago> yet The more difficult to obtain something is, the more it will be seen as a status symbol. It's always been that way.
- joncp 7y agoWell, that and the fact that those two countries are dense, flat, and have decent cycling weather.
- baq 7y agoif you call half a year of rain, wind and/or snow decent... flat and dense is enough.
- hnick 7y agoEven if it doesn't change cultures, at least it provides some proportional amount of money to (try to) fix the problem, rather than ignoring it or digging into the general tax fund.
- magduf 7y agoShipping stuff across the world isn't as bad as you think it is. The per-ton fuel efficiency of a modern cargo ship is astoundingly high; far, far better than a tractor-trailer or even a train. Concentrating manufacturing of a particular thing in one place is more efficient; we've been doing this for millennia now (stuff was being traded between Asia and Europe even in Roman times).