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> After a day spent at the shipyard watching Ceiba being built, I ask Lynx Guimond, another co-founder of Sailcargo, what he thinks is really needed to cut the

> After a day spent at the shipyard watching Ceiba being built, I ask Lynx Guimond, another co-founder of Sailcargo, what he thinks is really needed to cut the shipping industry’s sizeable emissions. Perhaps surprisingly for someone in the middle of building a ship, he tells me that one of the solutions is simply less shipping. “At the end of the day we just need to transport less stuff.” I love it when people are so brutally honest about their own work.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Absolutely correct. Sadly, the best solution is for corporations to make more robust, high-quality, long-lasting, expensive, products. i.e. Make less money, and do better work. So...who's first at bat?
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  Whoever can do so at the systemic level instead of expecting individual corporations to not be evil. I'm not really in the mood to discuss whether or not government regulation has any hope of doing so here, since there's a much-too-common inability to look beyond the dysfunctional US political system that is just too tiresome to discuss around on a Monday morning. But I will say on a meta-level that one way or another this must involve some form of politics, because fundamentally it's about humans trying to bring out desired human behavior.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    Heck, it's too tiresome to discuss on Tuesday-Sunday, as well.
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    Global climate accords, putting a price on carbon and thus making steel and burning fuel more expensive. The market can optimize well as long as the cost function is good.
    - vanderZwan 6y ago
      Sure, but it's the determining of the cost function where the irrational debating starts. Similarly, suggesting that there are situations where the cost function is both necessary and has such a high constant overhead that you're better off with a non-market system is a non-starter half of the time.
      - Gravityloss 6y ago
        I don't think discussing about the shape of the cost function is necessarily irrational. Let's say you've inherited a small fortune that includes a mansion. The mansion's upkeep is slowly eating away the fortune. What do you do? You can rationally make some scenarios how to deal with it. Maybe you sell it. Maybe you rent it out. Maybe you invest in it and start a hotel.
        vanderZwan 6y ago
        We're not talking about markets and cost functions as a general abstraction here, we're talking about the specific context of adjusting company behavior.
        Gravityloss 6y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your point. It doesn't really matter which industry sector does the improvements as long as the total improves. Doing it with free market ensures that they happen where they are cheapest.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    I wonder if all it would take is a change to how consumption taxes work. Sales tax and value added tax don't really discriminate between resource consumption and value added from workmanship. But one could at least imagine a taxation scheme that instead focuses on material inputs (including fuel). And that would hypothetically economically favor higher-quality, more durable goods over things like planned obsolescence and fast fashion. Might be technically tricky to accomplish in a world where most manufacturing happens overseas, though.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    My favorite proposal is to require that all companies take back their products at EOL and recycle them to an extremely high standard. This pushes the externalities of low lifespan products directly back onto the manufacturer, encouraging them to design for both lifespan and easy repair/recycling. Unfortunately we’ll also have to deal with IKEA style tactics of converting a single company into a complex web of disposable sub companies in order to dodge their tax or regulatory obligations.
    - vanderZwan 6y ago
      That could help with the externalized costs issue, yeah. Regarding your second point, don't we already have to do the latter anyway?
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Products do last, yes we can all cite examples of products that have failed earlier than we want but for the most part products today do very well considering that many never see any service before before being replaced for newer product and if they do get a service call its because they did finally break. Yes, some require none or there are no user serviceable parts Now, I say this, owning and still using a Toastmaster Toaster which is older than myself; all my dinnerware and glassware is older than most people along with desk lamps now using LEDs but were produced in the 30s; but the point is people don't put any effort into taking care of items because for many they have reached the point of disposable. Then when it comes to tech its not reliability but marketing has become so good people are quite willing to toss perfectly working items for the latest and greatest. Hell people do this with cars and anecdotally from a coworkers spouse who works in a home renovation company they toss perfectly good large appliances too.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    Yup. I grew up in Africa, and was exposed to people without a pot to piss in, making things last waaaaaayyyy beyond their "sell by" date. If I remember, Apple recently took a hit on their iPhone bottom line, because people are no longer getting a new phone every year.
  - bserge 6y ago
    > they toss perfectly good large appliances too. Oh they do, they really do. I worked at a recycling factory in the UK, the amount of household appliances, TVs, computers and computer parts, laptops, phones that people toss away is staggering. Many are in absolutely perfect working condition! Like, a 48" Samsung TV and a 52 inch 4K Sony TV would come in, we'd test them, nothing wrong with them. I can only assume someone moved house and just left everything, or they upgraded to bigger TVs. Not even going to mention the washers, dryers, dishwashers, fridges, about a quarter of them would be in good working condition. Who throws away a perfectly fine washer? Why? A new model has nothing new inside technology-wise, I can promise you that. It was against company policy, but employees would take them home, either for a low price (got myself a nice Neff microwave oven and a Bosch vacuum for £10 each... retail price in the hundreds) or just by being friends with a supervisor... I'm actually glad about that, because otherwise they'd be loaded into containers and sent to Asia or Africa somewhere. Absolutely ridiculous.
- 7952 6y ago
  It would be good to have some openness about how long products last from returns and warranty information. This could help consumers make a more informed choice.
- aeternum 6y ago
  The problem with this is that newer products are often significantly more efficient. The environment would likely be in worse shape if we were all still using CRT monitors, plasma TVs, old A/C units, incandescent lightbulbs, cars from the 70s.
The_rationalist 6y ago
Nuclear cargo would have zero emissions
- Gwypaas 6y ago
  It was tried back when nuclear everything was the future. Deemed non-economical except in special circumstances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion
KozmoNau7 6y ago
It's a good sign of someone who isn't bound by dogma. Far too many people are locked into the consumerism cycle, that we must improve the things we consume and consume more of them, because "more good" must be the same as "better overall", right?
- antepodius 6y ago
  I doubt a guy running ship-building is 'bound by dogma'. The consumers are the ones who need to be brainwashed into buying new stuff every 20 minutes; the producers don't need to be convinced into some grand story in order to comply- acting along is in their best interests, it's exactly what they want to do! They can do it, knowing exactly what's going on, with their eyes open.
gallamine 6y ago
We are making more from less. In every measurable way we're using less stuff to do more than we ever did. Citation: https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/ https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/
- perfunctory 6y ago
  > The improvement is not just a reduction in energy per dollar of GDP but less energy in total as economic growth progresses Hm, seems to contradict this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption Here I see energy consumption going straight up.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Efficiency gains are outstripped by far more production.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    I haven't read the book, only reviews, but based on those, it seemed to me that that McAfee's thesis relies on carefully selected numbers. For example, using "number of cattle" as a proxy for resource input into the dairy industry, even though everyone else just measures actual resource input. It leaves me wondering if the book (which I admittedly won't be reading; my existing reading list is already long enough) ends up functioning a bit like that satirical paper on smoking and long distance running from 10 years back. In it, the authors "convincingly" argued that marathon runners should all be smokers. The overall structure was a sort of numeric Gish Gallop: the paper focused on a constellation of individual measurements that are plausibly associated with both smoking and long distance running performance, while carefully steering clear of any measurement of smokers' actual athletic performance. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001541/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001541/

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Absolutely correct. Sadly, the best solution is for corporations to make more robust, high-quality, long-lasting, expensive, products. i.e. Make less money, and do better work. So...who's first at bat?

vanderZwan 6y ago
Whoever can do so at the systemic level instead of expecting individual corporations to not be evil. I'm not really in the mood to discuss whether or not government regulation has any hope of doing so here, since there's a much-too-common inability to look beyond the dysfunctional US political system that is just too tiresome to discuss around on a Monday morning. But I will say on a meta-level that one way or another this must involve some form of politics, because fundamentally it's about humans trying to bring out desired human behavior.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  Heck, it's too tiresome to discuss on Tuesday-Sunday, as well.
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  Global climate accords, putting a price on carbon and thus making steel and burning fuel more expensive. The market can optimize well as long as the cost function is good.
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    Sure, but it's the determining of the cost function where the irrational debating starts. Similarly, suggesting that there are situations where the cost function is both necessary and has such a high constant overhead that you're better off with a non-market system is a non-starter half of the time.
    - Gravityloss 6y ago
      I don't think discussing about the shape of the cost function is necessarily irrational. Let's say you've inherited a small fortune that includes a mansion. The mansion's upkeep is slowly eating away the fortune. What do you do? You can rationally make some scenarios how to deal with it. Maybe you sell it. Maybe you rent it out. Maybe you invest in it and start a hotel.
      - vanderZwan 6y ago
        We're not talking about markets and cost functions as a general abstraction here, we're talking about the specific context of adjusting company behavior.
        Gravityloss 6y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your point. It doesn't really matter which industry sector does the improvements as long as the total improves. Doing it with free market ensures that they happen where they are cheapest.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I wonder if all it would take is a change to how consumption taxes work. Sales tax and value added tax don't really discriminate between resource consumption and value added from workmanship. But one could at least imagine a taxation scheme that instead focuses on material inputs (including fuel). And that would hypothetically economically favor higher-quality, more durable goods over things like planned obsolescence and fast fashion. Might be technically tricky to accomplish in a world where most manufacturing happens overseas, though.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  My favorite proposal is to require that all companies take back their products at EOL and recycle them to an extremely high standard. This pushes the externalities of low lifespan products directly back onto the manufacturer, encouraging them to design for both lifespan and easy repair/recycling. Unfortunately we’ll also have to deal with IKEA style tactics of converting a single company into a complex web of disposable sub companies in order to dodge their tax or regulatory obligations.
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    That could help with the externalized costs issue, yeah. Regarding your second point, don't we already have to do the latter anyway?
Shivetya 6y ago
Products do last, yes we can all cite examples of products that have failed earlier than we want but for the most part products today do very well considering that many never see any service before before being replaced for newer product and if they do get a service call its because they did finally break. Yes, some require none or there are no user serviceable parts Now, I say this, owning and still using a Toastmaster Toaster which is older than myself; all my dinnerware and glassware is older than most people along with desk lamps now using LEDs but were produced in the 30s; but the point is people don't put any effort into taking care of items because for many they have reached the point of disposable. Then when it comes to tech its not reliability but marketing has become so good people are quite willing to toss perfectly working items for the latest and greatest. Hell people do this with cars and anecdotally from a coworkers spouse who works in a home renovation company they toss perfectly good large appliances too.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  Yup. I grew up in Africa, and was exposed to people without a pot to piss in, making things last waaaaaayyyy beyond their "sell by" date. If I remember, Apple recently took a hit on their iPhone bottom line, because people are no longer getting a new phone every year.
- bserge 6y ago
  > they toss perfectly good large appliances too. Oh they do, they really do. I worked at a recycling factory in the UK, the amount of household appliances, TVs, computers and computer parts, laptops, phones that people toss away is staggering. Many are in absolutely perfect working condition! Like, a 48" Samsung TV and a 52 inch 4K Sony TV would come in, we'd test them, nothing wrong with them. I can only assume someone moved house and just left everything, or they upgraded to bigger TVs. Not even going to mention the washers, dryers, dishwashers, fridges, about a quarter of them would be in good working condition. Who throws away a perfectly fine washer? Why? A new model has nothing new inside technology-wise, I can promise you that. It was against company policy, but employees would take them home, either for a low price (got myself a nice Neff microwave oven and a Bosch vacuum for £10 each... retail price in the hundreds) or just by being friends with a supervisor... I'm actually glad about that, because otherwise they'd be loaded into containers and sent to Asia or Africa somewhere. Absolutely ridiculous.
7952 6y ago
It would be good to have some openness about how long products last from returns and warranty information. This could help consumers make a more informed choice.
aeternum 6y ago
The problem with this is that newer products are often significantly more efficient. The environment would likely be in worse shape if we were all still using CRT monitors, plasma TVs, old A/C units, incandescent lightbulbs, cars from the 70s.

The_rationalist 6y ago

Nuclear cargo would have zero emissions

Gwypaas 6y ago
It was tried back when nuclear everything was the future. Deemed non-economical except in special circumstances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion

KozmoNau7 6y ago

It's a good sign of someone who isn't bound by dogma. Far too many people are locked into the consumerism cycle, that we must improve the things we consume and consume more of them, because "more good" must be the same as "better overall", right?

antepodius 6y ago
I doubt a guy running ship-building is 'bound by dogma'. The consumers are the ones who need to be brainwashed into buying new stuff every 20 minutes; the producers don't need to be convinced into some grand story in order to comply- acting along is in their best interests, it's exactly what they want to do! They can do it, knowing exactly what's going on, with their eyes open.

gallamine 6y ago

We are making more from less. In every measurable way we're using less stuff to do more than we ever did. Citation: https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/ https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/

perfunctory 6y ago
> The improvement is not just a reduction in energy per dollar of GDP but less energy in total as economic growth progresses Hm, seems to contradict this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption Here I see energy consumption going straight up.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Efficiency gains are outstripped by far more production.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I haven't read the book, only reviews, but based on those, it seemed to me that that McAfee's thesis relies on carefully selected numbers. For example, using "number of cattle" as a proxy for resource input into the dairy industry, even though everyone else just measures actual resource input. It leaves me wondering if the book (which I admittedly won't be reading; my existing reading list is already long enough) ends up functioning a bit like that satirical paper on smoking and long distance running from 10 years back. In it, the authors "convincingly" argued that marathon runners should all be smokers. The overall structure was a sort of numeric Gish Gallop: the paper focused on a constellation of individual measurements that are plausibly associated with both smoking and long distance running performance, while carefully steering clear of any measurement of smokers' actual athletic performance. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001541/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001541/