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Carbon Dioxide & The Shipping Industry

A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Source: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle

Each year, more than 11 billion tons of stuff gets carried around the world by large ships. Clothes, flat-screen TVs, grain, cars, oil — transporting these goods from port to port is what makes the global economy go ’round.

There’s a huge cost to all this shipping. The ships have to burn a lot of bunker fuel, and in 2012, they ended up emitting some 796 million tons of carbon dioxide. The researchers note that that’s more than “the whole of the UK, Canada or Brazil emit in a year.” Or, put another way, shipping is responsible for some 3 to 4 percent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, this is still much more efficient than shipping all that stuff by land or air. Still, researchers have been looking into ways to shrink the shipping industry’s carbon footprint. Nate Berg ran through some of the best ideas here: “From technological improvements such as retrofitted rudders and propellers to enhanced weather routing, shipping companies are eyeing many ways to improve their efficiency.”

Source: https://www.vox.com/2016/4/25/11503152/shipping-routes-map

Big ships can use more than 100 metric tons (110 tons) of fuel oil per day and can take two weeks or more to traverse oceans.

The environmental cost of shipping stuff is huge. Can we fix that?

Much of the stuff around us at any given moment — be it product, commodity, or raw material — was once on a boat. To get from wherever it was made or processed or harvested to wherever it’s used or consumed, all this stuff embarks on a seaborne journey around the world. It happens thousands of times a day, on tens of thousands of vessels moving from port to port. Ships handle roughly 90 percent of global trade, nearly 10 billion metric tons (11 billion tons) of stuff per year.

Boats and ports are only a part of the picture. Airlines, railroads, trucks, warehouses, refrigerators, delivery people — the international system of goods movement is integral to the way we live in the 21st century. It’s also a huge source of opportunity to reduce humans’ environmental footprint.

The 10 billion tons of stuff shipped around the planet in 2014 is two-thirds more than what was moved in 2000. “Retail sales in the United States and across the world are increasing, in spite of all the economic cycles,” says Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor at Hofstra University and an expert in transport geography. “There’s more people, there’s more consumption.”

More than 47,000 big ships handle the bulk of this cargo, most of which (by weight) is made up of crude oil, iron ore, coal and other building blocks of the modern world. About 6,100 container ships carry the consumer goods we’re more likely to encounter and purchase — the televisions and socks and frying pans of day-to-day life. Transported around the world in standardized containers, this stuff has dramatically transformed shipping from a dockside hustle of men hauling crates to a highly mechanized, multimodal system that can have a box of South American bananas off a boat and on sale in the US within hours.

The environmental cost of moving those bananas is, of course, complex. Big ships can use more than 100 metric tons (110 tons) of fuel oil per day and can take two weeks or more to traverse oceans. Shipping’s international nature makes it tricky to control; measures such as fuel regulations and emissions standards have long implementation periods and are slow to achieve greenhouse gas reductions and environmental goals. Standards vary inside and outside so-called “emissions control areas” established by the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency focused on shipping.

The fuel used in ships, for instance, still contains low levels of sulfur and is highly polluting, and it’s been estimated that shipping accounts for 3 to 4 percent of human-caused carbon emissions. A recent report from the European parliament estimated that number could rise as high as 17 percent by 2050. In spite of this potential, shipping hasn’t been prioritized in any of the international agreements coordinated through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the latest agreement coming out of the COP 21 talks in Paris does not include stipulations on shipping or the high emissions caused by air freight.

Source: https://www.vox.com/2015/12/23/10647768/shipping-environmental-cost

Not to mention, the rotation angle of the earth has changed drastically affecting weather patterns causing drought and having a negative impact on our crops and wild life migration as well as human migration. In addition, the rotation of the earth’s core has slowed causing the magnetosphere (the electromagnetic field protecting earth) to weaken allowing harmful radiation into our atmosphere.

Congress.gov

From the US Congress: Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023

From congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/884/text

Reported to Senate (07/11/2023)

Calendar No. 129

118th CONGRESS
1st Session

S. 884

[Report No. 118–57]

To establish a Government-wide approach to improving digital identity, and for other purposes.


IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

March 21, 2023

Ms. Sinema (for herself and Ms. Lummis) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

July 11, 2023

Reported by Mr. Peters, with amendments

[Omit the part struck through and insert the part printed in italic]


A BILL

To establish a Government-wide approach to improving digital identity, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023”.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

Congress finds the following:

(1) The lack of an easy, affordable, reliable, and secure way for organizations, businesses, and government agencies to identify whether an individual is who they claim to be online creates an attack vector that is widely exploited by adversaries in cyberspace and precludes many high-value transactions from being available online.

(2) Incidents of identity theft and identity fraud continue to rise in the United States, where more than 293,000,000 people were impacted by data breaches in 2021.

(3) Since 2017, losses resulting from identity fraud have increased by 333 percent, and, in 2020, those losses totaled $56,000,000,000.

(4) The Director of the Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Department of the Treasury has stated that the abuse of personally identifiable information and other building blocks of identity is a key enabler behind much of the fraud and cybercrime affecting the United States today.

(5) The inadequacy of current digital identity solutions degrades security and privacy for all people in the United States, and next generation solutions are needed that improve security, privacy, equity, and accessibility.

(6) Government entities, as authoritative issuers of identity in the United States, are uniquely positioned to deliver critical components that address deficiencies in the digital identity infrastructure of the United States and augment private sector digital identity and authentication solutions.

Read more: From the US Congress: Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023
The White House - Washington

From The White House: Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity

From the White House Briefing Room – Presidential Actions

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/05/12/executive-order-on-improving-the-nations-cybersecurity/

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Policy.  The United States faces persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector, the private sector, and ultimately the American people’s security and privacy.  The Federal Government must improve its efforts to identify, deter, protect against, detect, and respond to these actions and actors.  The Federal Government must also carefully examine what occurred during any major cyber incident and apply lessons learned.  But cybersecurity requires more than government action.  Protecting our Nation from malicious cyber actors requires the Federal Government to partner with the private sector.  The private sector must adapt to the continuously changing threat environment, ensure its products are built and operate securely, and partner with the Federal Government to foster a more secure cyberspace.  In the end, the trust we place in our digital infrastructure should be proportional to how trustworthy and transparent that infrastructure is, and to the consequences we will incur if that trust is misplaced.

Incremental improvements will not give us the security we need; instead, the Federal Government needs to make bold changes and significant investments in order to defend the vital institutions that underpin the American way of life.  The Federal Government must bring to bear the full scope of its authorities and resources to protect and secure its computer systems, whether they are cloud-based, on-premises, or hybrid.  The scope of protection and security must include systems that process data (information technology (IT)) and those that run the vital machinery that ensures our safety (operational technology (OT)). 

It is the policy of my Administration that the prevention, detection, assessment, and remediation of cyber incidents is a top priority and essential to national and economic security.  The Federal Government must lead by example.  All Federal Information Systems should meet or exceed the standards and requirements for cybersecurity set forth in and issued pursuant to this order.

Read more: From The White House: Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity