[oneJob]

It's not the mileage. It's the fuel and lack of regulation.

"The fuel used in ships is waste oil, basically what is left over after the crude oil refining process. It is the same as asphalt and is so thick that when cold it can be walked upon . It's the cheapest and most polluting fuel available and the world's 90,000 ships chew through an astonishing 7.29 million barrels of it each day, or more than 84% of all exported oil production from Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil exporter." [1]

[1] http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ [2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-...

[snuxoll]

Yeah, bunker C is awful environmentally, but it's cheap and still pretty good as far as energy density is concerned. Even if freighters ran on refined petrol they would still be going through millions of barrels of petrol a day though, I'd be interested to see the breakdown of pollutants exhausted from burning a gallon of bunker C vs refined petrol - I'm having a hard time finding this data.

[oneJob]

don't normally do this, but, given the seriousness with which i take this topic, just wanted to say, that was an exceedingly ignorant statement.

[JoeAltmaier]

Doesn't shipping contribute something like 25% of the world's air pollution? With only 6000 ships total on the seas? Its really, really bad.