Where There's Smoke, There's Pollution

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2003
Where There's Smoke, There's Pollution
1
Mon, 02-23-2004 - 5:29pm
When most people think of air pollution, they typically associate it with automobiles and industrial plants. Rarely do they consider the thousands of vessels that travel the oceans, rivers and other waterways. Yet over the past 15 years, as international trade has exploded and shipping capacity has grown by 50 percent, cargo ships have become one of the nation's leading sources of air pollution, threatening the health of millions of people living in port cities.

The largest vessels now rise higher than the Statue of Liberty and are about as long as the Empire State Building is tall. Yet while the 1970 federal Clean Air Act has forced regional air pollution agencies to clamp down on vehicle and power plant emissions, thousands of cargo, cruise and container vessels have remained essentially unregulated. To make matters worse, these ships burn the dirtiest grades of fuel — literally the dregs of the oil barrel after refiners have removed cleaner fuels like gasoline and jet fuel — to power their massive engines as they move in and out of American ports.

With the consistency of mud and sulfur levels 3,000 times that of gasoline, these low-grade fuels must be heated simply to allow them to move through pipes to enter the engine cylinders. The result? A single cargo ship coming into New York Harbor can release as much pollution as 350,000 current-model-year cars in an hour. Such levels, according to the American Lung Association, substantially elevate the risk of cancer and respiratory illness. In addition, satellite photographs show that trails of pollution thousands of miles long are causing semi-permanent clouds above shipping routes in the North Atlantic, Pacific and other oceans. These atmospheric scars of international shipping are causing concern among scientists studying global warming.

So far, the International Maritime Organization — a United Nations agency with authority over the world fleet — has ratified a global treaty that will take only small steps to improve fuel quality and require technologies that reduce harmful emissions. Why? Because passing a global treaty requires approval from nations representing more than 50 percent of the world's total shipping tonnage. That means that Panama, Liberia and other "flag of convenience" countries — where the bulk of the world's cargo ships are registered because of their lax regulations — have the power to weaken any treaty before passage.

The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that the maritime organization treaty will do little to clean up emissions from ships. Nevertheless, the United States Senate is expected to ratify the treaty later this year. Sadly, regulations developed by the United States in recent years have been equally disappointing. The Bush administration, which has a record of chipping away at the Clean Air Act, has also shown a lack of interest in protecting Americans from shipping pollution.

In 2003, the E.P.A. was poised to announce a separate and promising measure that would have gone much further than the maritime treaty. The proposed regulation would have reduced emissions from all vessels operating in United States waters and pressured the international group to adopt stricter regulations. (A similar unilateral approach was used by the United States in 1990 to force the maritime group to require the use of double hulls on oil tankers to help avoid spills.)

But after members of the powerful International Association of Independent Tanker Owners met with officials in Washington, the E.P.A. regulation was watered down. Requirements for a 30 percent reduction in air pollution were deleted; so too, was a provision to consider regulation of foreign-flagged ships, which are responsible for almost 90 percent of the pollution in United States ports. The environmental organization I head is challenging the E.P.A. over the modified regulations in a lawsuit that is now being decided by a panel of judges in Washington.

In the meantime, current E.P.A. regulation will keep ship emissions at today's stunningly high levels. (It contains an empty pledge by federal regulators to reconsider the issue in three years.) With public health at stake, it makes no sense for officials to obstruct the reduction of ship emissions, most of which are from foreign-flagged vessels. Domestic industries are working to reduce their share of air pollutants. Why allow foreign vessels to undermine those hard-fought gains?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/opinion/21LONG.html?ex=1078569714&ei=1&en=a3a27e534ed5a376

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 02-24-2004 - 8:42am

Thank you for posting this informative article.


With more & more worldwide trade this problem will only increase.

cl-Libraone~

 


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