Unintended Consequences

 

On 23 March 2021, the Ever Given, a 400 meter-long container ship, became stuck in the Suez Canal, its bow wedged into the eastern bank and its stern wedged into the western bank of the canal. It had just entered the canal, on its way to Rotterdam, during a sandstorm. After six days, the ship was freed, with significant help from Mother Nature (a full moon and a high tide). Now, inevitably, the legal fight will begin to place blame and seek damages. The ownership and management of the vessel is a Byzantine maze, which does not help. The investigation of all factors that led to this incident includes focusing on human error. David Graham in The Atlantic notes that maritime accidents are unlike aircraft accidents -- because the lessons learned in aviation accidents are just not applied to ships. 

What might the role of climate change be in such incidents? By all accounts the sandstorm and high winds would qualify for what has been called “global weirding.” Jeff Masters writes that the blockage of the Suez Canal by the Ever Given is possibly a warning about similar future events. The Ever Given, very tall in its own right and piled high with over 18,000 shipping containers, was effectively a giant sail. The winds on the day she grounded were blowing 25 to 30 knots. Perhaps we should not be so surprised that the grounding occurred but should be surprised that it hadn’t occurred before.

The world is ever more connected and many goods move by ship; around 80% of trade by volume and 70% of trade by value move by sea. There are significant known choke points on nautical routes, including the Suez and Panama Canals, as well as the Straits of Malacca, Hormuz, Dover, and Gibraltar. From 2002-2017, only the Strait of Gibraltar has been free of interruption of navigation due to a variety of problems.

Climate change will up the ante for future maritime problems as well as problems at the other major choke points along the littorals of Eurasia and the land routes (roads, railroads). This is really just the old problem of the law of unintended consequences. Humans have dumped incredible amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The prodigious accumulation of CO2, CH4, and other GHG has warmed the oceans and the atmosphere. And, as the vast majority of climate scientists note, we are at a tipping point that will produce ever greater effects on climate (the bigger picture) as well as weather (the more localized global weirding).

I think the Ever Given incident is yet another warning that humanity has ever less time to address the unintended consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Use of coal, petroleum, and natural gas has given us the world we see today. The price that our species will pay, however, for the civilization we have made may be the self-destruction of that very civilization itself.