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> But the flip side of this story is one of risk. Each of these companies represents an important micro pinch point in the global economy. If we are now living
by chiefalchemist 3y ago
> But the flip side of this story is one of risk. Each of these companies represents an important micro pinch point in the global economy. If we are now living through a new Cold War, and if that Cold War begins to affect global trade (this might already be happening) then
He missed an even more important point. That is, globalization's foundation is ultra-inexpensive shipping of raw goods, parts, and then finished product.
Long to short, globalization is dependent on the status quo fuel. That is oil. Lots of cheap oil. So the risk isn't simply from the bottlenecks and lack of economic diversity. It that globalization perpetuates a status quo that favors climate change.
- ben_w 3y agoIf the promises of small modular nuclear reactors comes to pass[0], we can have hydrocarbon-free shipping without much difficulty. Even without that, there are solutions. [0] I'm not holding my breath but I'll be happy if it does work out. IMO the biggest problem isn't even making them work, it's making them safe against deliberate tampering by highly motivated people with a lot of time on their hands.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago> without much difficulty This may be a underestimate of what would actually be involved with this change.
- chrischattin 3y agoThe technology is there from what I understand. The difficulty will be on the regulatory/bureaucratic side.
- bilsbie 3y agoWhy can’t cargo ships tow a multi acre barge covered in solar.
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoNot a chance. Shipping is taking a global mix of low cost workers and then as cheaply as possible getting goods from A to B. The margins are razor thin, generally negative with boom years in between. A 400m containership is operated with a crew of 16 + whatever maintenance technicians are on board. How du you feel about leaving a single low paid person in charge of the reactor on a 6 hours on and 6 hours off schedule? The long distance shipping industry is looking at methanol, ammonia and hydrogen to decarbonize.
- ben_w 3y ago> How du you feel about leaving a single low paid person in charge of the reactor on a 6 hours on and 6 hours off schedule? The way small modular reactors are advertised, that's not the risk I'm worried about. Instead, I'd ask: what can Hamas/North Korea/literal pirates do if they boarded the vessel half way between ports, and are actively trying to cause problems.
- rsynnott 3y agoAssume you’re talking about use in shipping? _All_ shipping is only about 10% of transport emissions.
- jszymborski 3y agoGP wasn't talking about emissions, they were talking about the price of oil. Also, 10% of emissions from one single source is a lot! (Some might say a boatload)
- FpUser 3y agoYou have to consider percentage of emission vs percentage of the goods moved. I believe shipping is way more favorable in the regard vs it being replace by local shipping by millions of trucks.
- bombcar 3y agoThose millions of trucks still roll, bringing goods to and from the ports.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoYes, GP here. I'm also talking about the fact that the very foundation of the globalization economy is based on fossil fuels. That belief (?) is going to influence decisions literally from the bottom up. As long as that foundation is printing money - and it is - it's going to influence all that sits on too of it.
- ihaveajob 3y agoThe cost of shipping overseas at scale (thanks to containerization, automated ports and gigantic ships) is lower than doing so locally with less efficient means (i.e. your chicken farmer's diesel van). Given that, even if the price of oil goes up, the math doesn't change because costs rise uniformly.
- weberer 3y agoI don't get it. Instead of a truck driving 100 miles from the factory to the store, you now have ships driving thousands of miles halfway across the world to a port, where a truck then picks up the product and drives 100 miles to the store.
- bberenberg 3y agoYes but you’re ignoring how much each carries. If you look at amount carried per amount of fuel consumed per journey, container ships are much more efficient than trucks regardless that one journey is 100 miles and the other is 3000.
- pier25 3y agoBut you still need to carry the contents in a truck from and to the port.
- weberer 3y agoNo, my point is that the trucks are still there. The ships are just adding an extra step that wasn't there before.
- bberenberg 3y agoAh gotcha I misunderstood. Are you then suggesting that everything everyone needs to consume and dependent supply chains be provided within close proximity of every individual consumer then?
- somenameforme 3y ago
- DiscourseFan 3y agoWell ok sure, but how do we manage specialized inputs for the production of the global economies goods and services in an efficient manner without gloabalization? Everyone growing up thinks they are going to be a "doctor" or a "lawyer" or a programmer or a professor or whatever, some very large sector of labor that requires very little specialized inputs: but in fact, the vast majority of people become involved in labor that intersects with the global economy in ways they only understand in a small way. That is the nature of our modern economy, why capitalism is so robust is precisely because it has somehow managed to efficiently distribute labor such that all these various processes whose complexity is dizzying in nature are able to work like grand clockwork. If an alternative form of economic planning does not come about, since Global Capitalism introduces so many externalities it will destroy itself relatively quickly. Such self-destruction seems inevitable at this point, but we are not given real alternatives: Communism is a spectre, it haunts discourse since it exists as the only alternative posited that seeks to increase productivity and global wealth. Others are simply regressive, right-wing policies that emphasize a return to communal life (whose advocates forget, or perhaps are simply unfamiliar with, the extraordinary poverty of traditional rural communities). And yet not once has communism been shown to out-compete capitalism in terms of wealth generation and the destruction of poverty. Capitalism has been adapted so severely to social concerns that it is difficult to tell (especially in China, which still calls itself communist) where the social policies end and the wealth generation begins. Though it is not and cannot be the end of history. But then how could our future be anything but at the same time both fantastically wealthy and horrifically dystopic? Out of that extreme chaos, what could come but more chaos, more terror, more luxury and more suffering. Magnitudes of pleasure and displeasure vacillation, desire inversion, operational schizophrenia, than we could even comprehend today. The alternative is already a lack of an alternative.
- ochoseis 3y agoShipping is cheap these days because volume is up, and because losses due to theft (thanks to containerization) and piracy (thanks to Team America World Police) are down.
- bumby 3y agoI wonder how much this changes as American priorities change. It seems as the population ages and entitlement spending as a proportion of GDP grows, there’s less tolerance for expensive world policing.
- pier25 3y agoThis was my first thought too. The reliance on shipping and the resulting emissions. It wouldn't surprise me if the huge cargo ships produced more emissions than cars globally.
- rsynnott 3y agoI mean, this is something you can trivially look up. Shipping, total, is about 10% of transport emissions, cars and vans are 50%, road freight is 25%. (Shipping, there, does include some stuff other than cargo, but it’s mostly cargo).
- pier25 3y agoYes I was on my phone before but here's some more data. https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector Shpping is 1.7% of global emissions. Much less than I had expected from reading the OP article.