Cleaning Up Shipping Emissions
Zero-emission tugboats, banana's climate risk, and a new card game to spark climate conversations
GOOD NEWS
Tugboats produce an estimated 40 million tons of carbon pollution a year, and 6 million tons of those emissions come from the US. That’s why it’s such good news that the Port of San Diego’s first fully-electric tugboat just arrived.
The 82-foot, zero-emission eWolf is powered by a 6.2 MW main propulsion battery and two electric drives, and the even better news is that it’s more powerful than any diesel-powered tugboat the port has today. The tugboat was built by Crowley Shipping in Jacksonville, Florida. It will replace one of the port’s diesel-powered tugboats, and over a ten-year period is estimated to reduce the port’s carbon emissions by about 3,100 tons.
The eWolf isn’t the world’s first all-electric tugboat, though! Last October, the HaiSea Wamis began operating in the Vancouver Harbour. And almost two years ago, in June 2022, the Ports of Auckland in New Zealand celebrated the arrival of its first all-electric tugboat, lovingly christened Sparky after a public vote.
International shipping accounts for 3 percent of global carbon pollution each year and every little bit of emissions reduction matters. It’s great to see these new green tugboats popping up around the globe. More, please!
NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS
In the last few newsletters, I shared how climate change is already affecting our food, from coffee to chocolate. Now, you can add bananas to the list.
In a warmer world, bananas—the world’s most exported fruit—will be harder to grow and the pathogens that plague them will become more widespread. As a result, the price of bananas will rise, industry experts gathered at the World Banana Forum in Rome said this week.
One thing that could help ensure a more sustainable future for bananas is paying more for them now. Higher prices “will help those countries that grow our bananas to prepare for climate change, to put mitigation in place, to look after soils, to pay their workers a higher wage,” says Dan Bebber, a biosciences professor at Exeter.
Sabine Altendorf, an economist at the at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, agreed, adding that “higher prices will actually not make a big difference at the consumer end, but will make a large difference along the value chain and enable a lot more environmental sustainability.”
WHAT YOU CAN DO
There’s an innovative new way to talk about climate change: the “Climate Conversations” card deck developed by Dr. Lauren Cagle at the University of Kentucky and some fellow Kentuckians worried about our shared future.
The card deck helps walk people through a 4-stage conversation about feelings and attitudes related to climate, and it doesn’t require a grasp of the more technical aspects of the science itself. “This game aims to create conversations, having participants work through their own relationships with climate change while envisioning a climate resilient future,” the website says. “Players take turns responding and listening to the prompts, forming a connection along the way.”
Cagle and others have used the cards to engage people at their local farmer’s market about climate and they're handing out yard signs, too. “It’s been shockingly effective at opening up conversations, and we’ve heard more and more from folks that they feel inspired by this to go on and talk to people in their lives about climate,” she says.
PDFs of the cards are free to download and print from the group’s website and Climate Conversations brings the game to events around Lexington, Kentucky. Check their calendar for future events, or email them to invite them to join an event you might be hosting or to ask for tips on how to host your own. The cards are available in English, Spanish, Dutch, and there’s even a K-12 English version for the classroom!
UPCOMING EVENTS
Mon Apr 9 at 7:30pm EST - Christians, Climate, and Our Culture Around the World with the Affiliation of Christian Biologists - virtual
Wed Apr 24 at 5pm EST - New Climate Solutions and Galvanizing for Action, the 22nd Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability at the University of Michigan - in person, in Ann Arbor MI
The biggest obstacles to eVessels like electric tugboats and an entirely battery-powered coastal fleet are government policy and industry inertia, mainly in the financial sector. The technical issues have been solved for decades. The cost issues and economics have favored eVessels for a decade now.
If you are, or know, any public servant, financier, or business transport decision-maker, get into this conversation that will save money for transportation, and end the biggest sources of pollution, as well as protect the future of food supply.
Undeniably, banana is poor man's fruit. She will be hit first, sadly even in the banana case.