Today we’ve got a brief from an organisation working to clean up the global shipping industry - a giant, but hidden, polluter that emits more CO2 than all but the top five country emitters.
#SortYourShipOut is asking governments at key negotiations at the UN's International Maritime Organisation next week (Nov 16-20) to reject a weak, industry-sponsored voluntary measure, and instead choose strong regulation that aligns shipping with the Paris Agreement.
We’re looking for quickfire thoughts, stunt ideas, GIFS, sketches, poster designs and more to help communicate this cause and make governments sit up and take notice.
The more entries the merrier and be as creative as you like!
Tweet your entries to @OneMinuteBriefs & @ShipSort with the hashtag #SortYourShipOut
Prize:
£200 cash prize for today’s winner!!!
Today’s brief:
"Create posters/memes telling the world's governments to regulate and sharply reduce the shipping sector's giant CO2 emissions this decade, for a safe climate and healthy ocean."
Problem:
Most of everything we buy – clothes, shoes, food, tech – is made overseas then put inside a giant container ship, travelling thousands of miles across the ocean to reach you.
It’s profitable to do this because ships run on the cheapest, dirtiest fossil fuel – “Heavy Fuel Oil”. This is the gunky black crap that comes out the bottom of an oil refinery, once all the transparent road fuels like gasoline and diesel have been separated out.
Burning this stuff is terrible for air quality. Last year, shipping’s air pollution caused around 400,000 premature deaths from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, and around 14 million childhood asthma cases.
It's also not great for our climate. Shipping emits over 1 BILLION TONNES of climate-heating greenhouse gases every year, and rising. That's more than all but the 5 biggest country emitters like China and Germany – driving extreme weather effects and ocean acidification.
Solution:
IF we can make governments listen to us, not industry lobbyists, at a key UN meeting at the International Maritime Organisation this November 16-20, we can turn this around!
We want governments to reject a weak, industry-sponsored draft proposal known as "J/5.rev1", because it has been gutted of any enforcement mechanisms, and will allow shipping's giant 1 billion tonnes annual CO2 footprint to keep growing for another decade or more.
This is in complete denial of climate science. The IPCC says we have to almost halve emissions over this crucial next decade, to save ourselves from the worst impacts.
Instead, we want governments to adopt the detailed plan drawn up by the Clean Shipping Coalition of expert observer NGOs at IMO, for how to improve efficiency and reduce carbon intensity in shipping rapidly over the next decade, in line with climate science, while giving shipping and ports worldwide a much-needed green technology and green jobs upgrade.
Especially after the Mauritius oil spill disaster, it's clearer than ever we need to get shipping off fossil fuels.
From our message testing we know:
Most people know little or nothing about shipping, even though our modern consumer lifestyles rely on it. Our society suffers from "sea blindness" (added to by industry secrecy and operating from offshore tax haven Flags of Convenience)
Most people want governments to take strong action to tackle climate change, but have no idea shipping is one of the biggest drivers of climate change
Most people don't know that the International Maritime Organisation even exists, yet alone who their country representatives are at this UN agency, or that its making huge climate decisions on their behalf
Visualisation of Global Cargo Shipping Lanes by https://www.shipmap.org
