(B)LOGBOOK

The rebirth of sail cargo in the collective imagination, albeit a niche one, can be traced back to an Atlantic crossing aboard a traditional tall ship, the Bark Europa, by three young men, two Dutch and one Austrian, in the early 2000s. Sailing for days with favorable winds alongside a container ship, they asked themselves why pollute the atmosphere with noxious fumes if "the air is much cleaner than oil and besides, it belongs to no one?", to quote the unforgettable Corto Maltese? No sooner said than done (so to speak...), they fitted out the now legendary sailing ship, which they named, as they were known, Tres Hombres.

It's true that today's shipping is an ecological abomination, which should properly be defined as the "incineration of toxic waste on the high seas," or the disposal of heavy oils, the last filthy byproduct of petroleum processing, after the extraction of substances for medical use, plastics, and increasingly less "noble" fuels. One fact has stuck with us all, and it' scertainly outdated today, but I don't think it's for the better: the 16 largest container ships in the world emit as many harmful fumes into the atmosphere as all global road transport.

Out of sight, outof mind, one might think, because what happens at sea is far from people's perception, as they are more attentive to what happens in their immediate surroundings. The map above, however, reveals a dramatic, worrying truth, showing the air pollution along the routes of today's globalized economy. The air we breathe along the beaches of the English Channel or the Strait of Sicily is much less clean than one might think.

Another overlooked fact: a standard 40-foot container weighs four tons empty. Those playful Lego bricks that are so innocently loaded and unloaded, moved from one place to another, or transported by trucks, require an enormous amount of energy at every instant, which dramatically increases the footprint of each shipment. Notice the speed of a loaded container truck going uphill. 

Upon closer inspection, it seems like a problem without a solution. A dilemma of modernity. Perhaps, but perhaps we need to ask ourselves what consequences a consumer behavior that turns a blind eye to the consequences of our comforts has.