4 ms·

Sea freight is by far the most carbon efficient means of transporting goods. Would you rather everything be air freighted?

• sodality2 5y ago
  I think the problem might be the volume of goods being transported; it is of course in their best interest to increase it. However, if we have to be sending stuff, might as well use sea freight.
• woodruffw 5y ago
  You should probably qualify: it’s the most carbon efficient means of transporting goods across large bodies of water. Trains are substantially more efficient than freighters, when they can be used. That in turn points to one of the problems with sea shipping: the true costs are massively externalized, and so companies will choose to ship trinkets around the world by boat twice rather than building them on the same continent (or even going across the continent by rail.)
• hutzlibu 5y ago
  There used to be a time, when the food we ate, came from the fields around us. I think that was be more efficient. But I also enjoy tropical fruit at times and boats are indeed quite efficient, but trains will be probably more efficient, if you have electrified ones and a railroadconnection.
  • tokai 5y ago
    There was also a time when famines were a common occurrence.
    • gaius_baltar 5y ago
      > There was also a time when famines were a common occurrence. People who downvoted this horribly missed the parent's point. It is the easy and frequent transportation of goods that prevents a local crop disaster to become a local famine,
    • gspetr 5y ago
      No worries, 21st century got you covered! Russia + Ukraine combined amount to some 25% of global wheat export alone, not to mention how global fertilizer prices will skyrocket in the months to come, causing prices to increase for a lot of food products down the line.
      • orangepurple 5y ago
        I guess there has never been a better time to switch to a keto diet!
  • netsharc 5y ago
    The industrial world probably couldn't survive without ships. Here's an old story about places involved in making an electric toothbrush: https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/globalization-the-global-toothbrush-a-398229.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/globalization-t... A bigger version of the image https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Division-of-Labour-Source-Hope-2005-p-131_fig5_215967423 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Division-of-Labour-Sourc...
• paganel 5y ago
  > Sea freight is by far the most carbon efficient means of transporting goods. My idea is that we shouldn't see "transporting goods" over half of the world and in so great quantities for granted, not "transporting goods" over half of the world in so great quantities is a valid option if we really want to fight climate change. I mean, I can understand transporting basic food (wheat, rice) over water on great distances, of course, but I fail to see why we do this [1] while at the same time we keep lying to ourselves that fighting climate change is just one recycling away. [1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BfMJqjoOIug/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BfMJqjoOIug/maxresdefault.jpg
• sofixa 5y ago
  Trains, even non-electric ones are drastically more efficient.