Skipper’s View
GREEN INITIATIVES HAVE TO BE ABOUT MORE THAN GESTURE POLITICS AND WORDS
WELCOME TO OUR annual green issue. Yes, this is the issue where I urge you to Go Green! and a million other platitudes that have been used so much that they cease to mean anything. Putting together our focus on green initiatives within the marine industry, I was keen to sift out the greenwashing initiatives from those that actually serve some purpose. I vividly remember working as a reporter on a local newspaper some years ago and covering the launch of some newly built and speciously titled 'eco pods' which a hotel had built. The smooth talking owner stated that heating these pods 'used the equivalent energy as it takes to boil a kettle'. Utterly meaningless. Anyway, encouragingly, there are some really impressive new initiatives out there in the sailing industry that will make a meaningful contribution when it comes to reducing the carbon footprint of our industry. Because this is a vital issue that is about much more than clever manipulation of words or gestures.
The fact is that we sailors are often there on the frontline when it comes to the environment and we often bear witness at close hand to the damage that is done every day. It has often struck me how, on a night watch, you not only see a large freighter passing but you smell it. They reek of diesel and leave a trail of pollution in their wake. It strikes me as one of the saddest twists that it is less than 80 years ago that the last commercial sailing ships made their bow. The last tall ship grain race back from Australia to the UK took place in 1939 and symbolises the last time a fleet of tall ships transported a significant amount of bulk cargo purely for commercial gain. After that, the skills and knowledge that had propelled ships and freight across oceans almost completely pollution free for centuries was lost. Less than a century later and we cast around for ways to reduce pollution having just binned one of the most sustainable and sophisticated forms of transport out there and there seems no way back. To say it's a shame is putting it mildly.