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pvaldes

Saving dismantling expenses like a pro. Trow it into the nature and now is problem of another people.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

[Interviewer:] So what do you do to protect the environment in cases like this?

[Senator Collins:] Well, the ship was towed outside the environment.

[Interviewer:] Into another environment….

[Senator Collins:] No, no, no. it’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in the environment

[Interviewer:] Yeah, but from one environment to another environment.

[Senator Collins:] No, it’s beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment. It has been towed beyond the environment.

[Interviewer:] Well, what’s out there?

[Senator Collins:] Nothing’s out there…

[Interviewer:] Well there must be something out there

[Senator Collins:] There is nothing out there… all there is …. is sea …and birds ….and fish

[Interviewer:] And?

[Senator Collins:] And 20,000 tons of crude oil

[Interviewer:] And what else?

[Senator Collins:] And a fire

[Interviewer:] And anything else?

[Senator Collins:] And the part of the ship that the front fell off, but there’s nothing else out there.

An Australian Senator Collins -- not US Senator from Maine Susan B. Collins.

They're Australian political comedians, John Clarke and Brian Dawe. John Clarke is unfortunately no longer with us.

John Clarke is unfortunately no longer with us.

I did not know that. What a shame. These two did brilliant work together. "The Front Fell Off" was my introduction to them, and I have to say, I don't know if I've ever laughed that hard before, or since.

I never understood why governments don't require companies to put down cleanup expenses upfront or purchase insurance or similar so they can't externalize these costs. Same with virtually any commercial building, etc.

In this specific case, which government? The ship was sailing from Greece to Haiti, on a Tanzanian flag, when it was abandoned. Which government should've required a cleanup bond or insurance, the Greek, Haitian, Tanzanian, or the Irish?

Ireland bans Tanzanian ships until someone pays up.

Any country should require a ship registered to it be either bonded or insured

And what, Ireland claims it from whichever it was paid to?

And you only need one country not to, so you can register there. You'll never get every country to sign up to anything like that, because it makes being the one that doesn't too valuable.

We have mechanisms to deal with stuff like this. You write a treaty where each member country pledges to implement this scheme, and then member countries refuse to let commercial ships from countries outside the treaty to dock.

The entity to whom the bond was payed then pays for the ship’s salvage.

You don’t need every country to implement this. There can be bond havens just like there are tax havens. It’s not ideal but it’s still a huge improvement over making every country a haven. And anyway, there are lots of things a country can do to devalue havens, such as prohibiting businesses operating within said country from doing business via ships that are registered in these havens, including transitive. No system is perfect, but why would we reject imperfect solutions that still do a ton of good?

It might make the cost of doing / entering business too high, to the point where things can't actually proceed.

Right, that's the feature. If you can't afford to go into business without polluting (or otherwise externalizing costs), you can't afford to go into business. If we want to keep the barrier to entrepreneurship low, we can subsidize it, but we don't get to pretend that pollution/etc is free. It feels more expensive because we either raise the barrier to entrepreneurship or we raise taxes, but the reality is that we've been subsidized by a whole bunch of environmental debt.

Great intention but this is no different than big companies lobbying for more regulation in their sector to "pull the ladder up" because they are the only company who can pay the costs. The result is companies get bigger and smaller players lose out. Everyone ends up working for minimum wage except very few rich people.

I'm starting to believe this meme was really concocted by some of those "big companies". It's quite brilliant, actually: using the public's hatred of big corporation to actively protect them against any changes.

See the second sentence of my previous post.

That's not a feature. You're basically pointing to a world where only established multinational corporations are going to be able to afford to do anything at all. This results in more money being extracted from local economies into the coffers of the ultra-rich for no gain to us other than ostensibly environmental protection, which clearly others can just pay to get around (since nowhere in the discussion was any real suggestion that the actual implementation in practice was going to be any different, just the bond money up front).

> environmental debt

Oh great, it's the 2020 meme. First I've seen it, but I just know I'm gonna be reading this bs phrase everywhere now.

> That's not a feature. You're basically pointing to a world where only established multinational corporations are going to be able to afford to do anything at all.

See the second sentence of the post you replied to.

> Oh great, it's the 2020 meme. First I've seen it, but I just know I'm gonna be reading this bs phrase everywhere now.

Look, I'm not a lefty, I'm a moderate independent, and I'm probably fiscally conservative, which is precisely why I hold this position (it's "personal responsibility" applied to macroeconomics). So put away any notions of partisanship you might have had. "environmental debt" is exactly what this is (by all indicators, anyway), and if you disagree feel free to substantiate.

Nah, it's a fair enough phrase, I just foresee it being used as a bludgeon soon enough

Environmental debt is not a new concept at all. And is a serious concept used by many people since decades and not coined to be taken as a joke

> established multinational corporations

> money being extracted from local economies

> the coffers of the ultra-rich

For someone complaining about "environmental debt", a term I have never seen before, you do use a lot of tired phrases.

I also don't quite believe that international shipping is quite as amendable to scrappy little startups with little money as you make it out to be?

> other than ostensibly environmental protection

Yes, the benefit of the proposed scheme is environmental protection, and therefore it is no surprise that you identify it as it's primary benefit ("ostensibly" being a meaningless qualifier used to vaguely dismiss the idea without feeling the need to argue the point).

Both the principle as well as the mechanisms are well established. Car insurance comes to mind, or really any liability insurance.

An insurance scheme would, in fact, significantly lower the capital requirements compared to straight-up bonds, in the same way that you don't have to put up a million $ to get that amount of coverage for your car.

> actual implementation in practice

Require insurance against environmental damage caused by any vessel. Deny entry to foreign vessels not complying.

> Require insurance against environmental damage caused by any vessel.

Requiring insurance is not the same as requiring the money to be put aside up front like a bond, which was what was being suggested earlier in the thread. I have no issue with insurance requirements if you think it's possible to run an insurance business profitably that (a) doesn't charge so much that we still have the same problem and (b) actually has the money and will actually pay out when a billion dollar environmental disaster happens.

I don't think the economics of that work.

As for

> a lot of tired phrases

complaining about the ultra-rich establishing barriers to entry that keeps the little guy out is never going to be "tired" until it stops being the default operating mode of these organizations.

> Requiring insurance is not the same as requiring the money to be put aside up front like a bond, which was what was being suggested earlier in the thread.

The suggestion you're referring to was mine, and I suggested either insurance or a bond.

> I don't think the economics of that work.

The current economics only "work" now because the books are cooked. No one is accounting for pollution. Like I've said before, we can address the environment and keep the barrier of entry to entrepreneurship low: subsidies and tax breaks for small businesses to offset the regulatory burden.

Lastly, I'm mostly fixating on the environment/pollution for convenience, but we should really be doing this anywhere that we are externalizing costs.

Dismantling expenses should be a negative number for any mostly metal structure other than a nuclear reactor. All that steel is worth something.

Ships are often full of asbestos, hydraulic fluid, poisonous bilge etc., not to mention this one has been floating around without upkeep so might be structurally dubious. It's not as simple as

1. Climb onto ship 2. Fire up blowtorch 3. Profit

The sad reality is that much shipbreaking is done in jurisdictions without effective environmental laws -- for just that reason. Case in point:

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/greenpeace-regret...

Sure, but there's an industry which does this. Although whether their price would pay for towing it from Ireland to Bangladesh or wherever, I have no idea.

Edit: turns out there are more places doing this in Europe than I realised (and in Turkey). There's a map here: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/ships/list.htm

No, there's an industry that claims to do this, just like there was an industry for global plastic until the Chinese government shut it down because it was essentially a scam.

Oh they absolutely do cut up ships & recycle the steel. You can watch it happen from space!

Whether they keep any promises they make about how they handle oil, asbestos, worker safety, of course that's another question.

Should only need to tow it to Turkey (I know for a fact there are marine salvage yards there) or maybe Libya (they probably have a few as well). There's no lack of more local (than the far east) places to scrap a ship, probably environmentally cleaner to do it locally too.

Fair good point. Maybe is not recyclable for some reason

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