[mikeash]

Why international shipping specifically? It’s extremely efficient and currently accounts for only around 3% of global CO2 emissions. (Compare to roughly 50% for electricity production, 20% for manufacturing, and 20% for transportation as a whole.)

[EForEndeavour]

For starters, because shipping CO2 emissions are rising fast [0], and CO2 is by far not the only concern. Ships burn unrefined "bunker oil," emitting proportionally huge amounts of particulate pollution, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides, which harm people and other organisms [1, 2]. For example, back in 2009, the 15 biggest ships emitted as much SO2 and NOx as all the cars on earth: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...

[1] http://www.npi.gov.au/resource/oxides-nitrogen-0

[2] http://www.npi.gov.au/resource/sulfur-dioxide

[mikeash]

Emissions from everything else are rising fast too. Surely curbing emissions growth from electricity generation will have a much bigger impact.

The articles about SO2 and NOx emissions are clickbait. They compare to cars, which are extremely clean in this respect. In any case, the subject here is climate change and these pollutants are irrelevant. (Strictly speaking, they slightly mitigate warning.)

I’m not saying we should ignore shipping, but I don’t see why it should be anywhere close to first on the list of things to focus on when fighting climate change.