Tuesday, December 31, 2019

No Sulphur - Lead me out of the Dark Climate Change

So finally, Y2K20 is here, and for the new year's resolution merchant ships vow to cut down on smoking sulphur.
 
In deed its gonna be a landmark year in the history of fuels. Before this, 1996 was another such year when another element lead(Pb) was eliminated from gasoline for use in on-road vehicles. 
 
Notwithstanding the great challenges in compliance and implementation of the use of low sulphur fuels in marine industry, the things are expected to fall in place after teething problems.  One thing is for sure to start with, use of sulphur deficient fuels will hike up the logistics cost per ton, which will be paid by the end user as usual. But then, preservation of climate has a cost attached to it. You can eat your cake and have it too, provided you have means to replenish it. Cutting down on sulphur at sea is one such move. A move to make sure, when it falls from the sky, its not just an acid rain.
 
I thank the maritime fraternity to have taken this bold step in the right, oops left direction. Ha ha...
 
Climate has been screaming for the past few decades and trying to tell greed driven people to slow down in their pursuit of mirage and not to treat it with impunity. With extreme weather getting better of people worldwide, the climate activists are being taken more seriously lately. And in 2019, TIME actually stopped and chose Greta Thunberg as its face of the year to highlight the issue. There are some effective steps being taken by governments and organisations to moon walk over the carbon foot prints.
 

Led by hate and greed, the last decade saw an outright rise of communalism, racism and nationalism worldwide. I sincerely hope, 2020 proves to be a tipping point for the right movement to be impeached and stalled.