5 ms·

> Well, West should stop dumping their garbage to the rest of the world. Actually the export of ships to be wrecked in Asia already is banned under EU law and

> Well, West should stop dumping their garbage to the rest of the world. Actually the export of ships to be wrecked in Asia already is banned under EU law and international treaties - and sometimes, even company owners can and do land in jail for violating them, as it happened to Georg Eide [1]. The difficulty lies in the fact that many ships aren't registered in the EU countries, but in small countries like Antigua who don't have any incentive to help out European countries enforce their laws, and by many ships being legally hidden between layers of shell companies. It can go as far as there being a dedicated LLC in yet another tax haven per ship, and once the ship is to be wrecked, it isn't the ship itself that's being sold for wrecking (because that would be openly illegal and easy to catch and prove for authorities), but the LLC is being sold, and the lax attitude towards audit and public records requirements in the tax havens makes it very difficult to prove illegal intent. [1] https://www.freitag.de/autoren/julia-lauter/reedereien-lassen-alte-frachter-im-globalen-sueden-abwracken https://www.freitag.de/autoren/julia-lauter/reedereien-lasse...

jopsen 2y ago
We could require that ships they dock in EU harbours are owned by countries that are party to some international anti-ship breaking agreement. But it's a lot of paperwork :)
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Still would not prevent just selling the LLC at the end of the ship's useful life. And I'm not sure how to effectively police that.
  - Teever 2y ago
    Find the names of the people involved, get a warrant and use the full power of that impressive global surveillance system that we've created to fight the global war on terror to surveil them and find evidence of other crimes that they've surely committed and prosecute the fuck out of them for that.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Seems like a lot of work to prevent India from breaking ships it wants to break.
      - Teever 2y ago
        Meaningless statement. You can say the exact same thing about any law.
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Not every law tries to regulate the behavior of people in other jurisdictions.
        Teever 2y ago
        How is this law like that?
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Europeans don't like the working conditions of shipbreakers in India, and don't like the pollution it creates in India. Europeans can't directly tell the Indians what they can and cannot do. Instead, the parent post is proposing to use the state surveillance app aratus to go after and prosecute the f** out of people that sell ships to India. I said it seems like a lot of work to try to stop someone in another country from doing something in their own country. I prefer the more hands off approach where you let people in other countries decide what they want to do as long as they aren't hurting you. If India wants to ban ship breaking or impose harsh restrictions, they can do that themselves. I think it's arrogant and dehumanizing for Outsiders to try to control what happens in India.
        toyg 2y ago
        I don't disagree on the overall principle of avoiding the establishment of de-facto extraterritoriality, but it should be said that environmental pollution is not a localized problem. The Earth is a connected system, and what happens in India or China will eventually affect Europe and America (in the form of polluted air/water making its way here, or climate change provoked by emissions), and viceversa. Environmental issues are inevitably global, and countries should talk about them and find global agreements that are fair and enforced by everyone. We can't just hide behind "my backyard, my rules".
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Like the Jones Act [0], it's easy to create unintended consequences. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Cabotage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#...
  - jopsen 2y ago
    That's a good point, or you could make a new cookie law. Or kill all the logistics companies in the EU.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  But that might put the EU at an economic disadvantage; it's hubris to believe the rest of the world will bend backwards to meet EU's rules. I mean they do, see cookie banners/GDPR, Apple, etc, but still. I'm of the unsubstantiated opinion that all the laws make the EU a less desireable market. But that's a policy based on morals instead of economics / relentless capitalism.
  - jopsen 2y ago
    It's certainly not without risk. And like I said, it's a lot of paperwork. Maybe, one day, or maybe in small increments.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > But that might put the EU at an economic disadvantage; it's hubris to believe the rest of the world will bend backwards to meet EU's rules. Actually, it will. RoHS and the push for standardizing phone connectors ended up influencing the whole world and making it a better place for everyone. The EU is a sizable market, and unlike the US with its constant elections and government shutdowns, it's politically relatively stable. No one, as said not even Apple, can ignore the demands of the European Union.
    - scarby2 2y ago
      The EU has consent elections, it's just a proportional representation forces people to work together to get anything done, so you end up with a lot of relatively uncontroversial work happening. There's also little point in trying to score points as you will never have a majority
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        > The EU has consent elections The EU parliament is elected every five years, and while most of the member countries elect during the EU parliament term and so it's election year somewhere in the EU every year, national elections usually have negligible impact on the European level (outside of dramatic swings like in Poland or Slovakia between dedicated notorious pro-EU and anti-EU parties). In contrast, the US re-elects the whole House and 1/3rd of the Senate every two years which means that the House is basically only at peace to work for a year at a time (first half year is spent on getting the newbies up to speed, last half year is filled with campaigning), and if changing control over the Senate is even possible depends on if the states whose seats are up for reelection are considered swing states or not. The entire way the US Congress works is not incentivizing bipartisan legislation, and it's outright hostile to the idea that there could be more than two political parties.
gosub100 2y ago
To make matters worse, when these ships come under attack or get hijacked, suddenly they want the full backing of Western military forces. Strange they don't call on Panema or Antigua's military forces, since that's where they are registered.
- eru 2y ago
  > [...], suddenly they want the full backing of Western military forces. Who is 'they'? Do you have records of the 'ships' (I assume their owners?), asking for that full backing directly?
  - gosub100 2y ago
    Yes, I do.
withinboredom 2y ago
Reminds me of when I lived on a sailboat. I just bought the LLC that owned it, which always operated at a loss just to keep the ship in working order, which was a tax write off. It even came with accountants who knew how to keep everything in the books “correct.”

jopsen 2y ago

We could require that ships they dock in EU harbours are owned by countries that are party to some international anti-ship breaking agreement. But it's a lot of paperwork :)

mschuster91 2y ago
Still would not prevent just selling the LLC at the end of the ship's useful life. And I'm not sure how to effectively police that.
- Teever 2y ago
  Find the names of the people involved, get a warrant and use the full power of that impressive global surveillance system that we've created to fight the global war on terror to surveil them and find evidence of other crimes that they've surely committed and prosecute the fuck out of them for that.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Seems like a lot of work to prevent India from breaking ships it wants to break.
    - Teever 2y ago
      Meaningless statement. You can say the exact same thing about any law.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Not every law tries to regulate the behavior of people in other jurisdictions.
        Teever 2y ago
        How is this law like that?
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Europeans don't like the working conditions of shipbreakers in India, and don't like the pollution it creates in India. Europeans can't directly tell the Indians what they can and cannot do. Instead, the parent post is proposing to use the state surveillance app aratus to go after and prosecute the f** out of people that sell ships to India. I said it seems like a lot of work to try to stop someone in another country from doing something in their own country. I prefer the more hands off approach where you let people in other countries decide what they want to do as long as they aren't hurting you. If India wants to ban ship breaking or impose harsh restrictions, they can do that themselves. I think it's arrogant and dehumanizing for Outsiders to try to control what happens in India.
        toyg 2y ago
        I don't disagree on the overall principle of avoiding the establishment of de-facto extraterritoriality, but it should be said that environmental pollution is not a localized problem. The Earth is a connected system, and what happens in India or China will eventually affect Europe and America (in the form of polluted air/water making its way here, or climate change provoked by emissions), and viceversa. Environmental issues are inevitably global, and countries should talk about them and find global agreements that are fair and enforced by everyone. We can't just hide behind "my backyard, my rules".
ethbr1 2y ago
Like the Jones Act [0], it's easy to create unintended consequences. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Cabotage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#...
- jopsen 2y ago
  That's a good point, or you could make a new cookie law. Or kill all the logistics companies in the EU.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
But that might put the EU at an economic disadvantage; it's hubris to believe the rest of the world will bend backwards to meet EU's rules. I mean they do, see cookie banners/GDPR, Apple, etc, but still. I'm of the unsubstantiated opinion that all the laws make the EU a less desireable market. But that's a policy based on morals instead of economics / relentless capitalism.
- jopsen 2y ago
  It's certainly not without risk. And like I said, it's a lot of paperwork. Maybe, one day, or maybe in small increments.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > But that might put the EU at an economic disadvantage; it's hubris to believe the rest of the world will bend backwards to meet EU's rules. Actually, it will. RoHS and the push for standardizing phone connectors ended up influencing the whole world and making it a better place for everyone. The EU is a sizable market, and unlike the US with its constant elections and government shutdowns, it's politically relatively stable. No one, as said not even Apple, can ignore the demands of the European Union.
  - scarby2 2y ago
    The EU has consent elections, it's just a proportional representation forces people to work together to get anything done, so you end up with a lot of relatively uncontroversial work happening. There's also little point in trying to score points as you will never have a majority
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      > The EU has consent elections The EU parliament is elected every five years, and while most of the member countries elect during the EU parliament term and so it's election year somewhere in the EU every year, national elections usually have negligible impact on the European level (outside of dramatic swings like in Poland or Slovakia between dedicated notorious pro-EU and anti-EU parties). In contrast, the US re-elects the whole House and 1/3rd of the Senate every two years which means that the House is basically only at peace to work for a year at a time (first half year is spent on getting the newbies up to speed, last half year is filled with campaigning), and if changing control over the Senate is even possible depends on if the states whose seats are up for reelection are considered swing states or not. The entire way the US Congress works is not incentivizing bipartisan legislation, and it's outright hostile to the idea that there could be more than two political parties.

gosub100 2y ago

To make matters worse, when these ships come under attack or get hijacked, suddenly they want the full backing of Western military forces. Strange they don't call on Panema or Antigua's military forces, since that's where they are registered.

eru 2y ago
> [...], suddenly they want the full backing of Western military forces. Who is 'they'? Do you have records of the 'ships' (I assume their owners?), asking for that full backing directly?
- gosub100 2y ago
  Yes, I do.

withinboredom 2y ago

Reminds me of when I lived on a sailboat. I just bought the LLC that owned it, which always operated at a loss just to keep the ship in working order, which was a tax write off. It even came with accountants who knew how to keep everything in the books “correct.”