| Recorded at | October 18, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Event | TED@BCG Singapore |
| Duration (min:sec) | 11:06 |
| Video Type | TED Institute Talk |
| Words per minute | 175.4 medium |
| Readability (FK) | 58.12 easy |
| Speaker | Rose George |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Occupation | journalist |
| Description | English journalist and author |
Official TED page for this talk
Synopsis
Almost everything we own and use, at some point, travels to us by container ship, through a vast network of ocean routes and ports that most of us know almost nothing about. Journalist Rose George tours us through the world of shipping, the underpinning of consumer civilization.
| 1 | 00:12 | A couple of years ago, | ||
| 2 | 00:14 | Harvard Business School chose | ||
| 3 | 00:16 | the best business model of that year. | ||
| 4 | 00:18 | It chose Somali piracy. | ||
| 5 | 00:23 | Pretty much around the same time, | ||
| 6 | 00:25 | I discovered that there were 544 seafarers | ||
| 7 | 00:31 | being held hostage on ships, | ||
| 8 | 00:34 | often anchored just off the Somali coast | ||
| 9 | 00:36 | in plain sight. | ||
| 10 | 00:39 | And I learned these two facts, and I thought, | ||
| 11 | 00:41 | what's going on in shipping? | ||
| 12 | 00:44 | And I thought, would that happen in any other industry? | ||
| 13 | 00:46 | Would we see 544 airline pilots | ||
| 14 | 00:50 | held captive in their jumbo jets | ||
| 15 | 00:51 | on a runway for months, or a year? | ||
| 16 | 00:55 | Would we see 544 Greyhound bus drivers? | ||
| 17 | 00:59 | It wouldn't happen. | ||
| 18 | 01:00 | So I started to get intrigued. | ||
| 19 | 01:03 | And I discovered another fact, | ||
| 20 | 01:06 | which to me was more astonishing | ||
| 21 | 01:08 | almost for the fact that I hadn't known it before | ||
| 22 | 01:11 | at the age of 42, 43. | ||
| 23 | 01:13 | That is how fundamentally we still depend on shipping. | ||
| 24 | 01:19 | Because perhaps the general public | ||
| 25 | 01:21 | thinks of shipping as an old-fashioned industry, | ||
| 26 | 01:24 | something brought by sailboat | ||
| 27 | 01:27 | with Moby Dicks and Jack Sparrows. | ||
| 28 | 01:30 | But shipping isn't that. | ||
| 29 | 01:32 | Shipping is as crucial to us as it has ever been. | ||
| 30 | 01:37 | Shipping brings us 90 percent of world trade. | ||
| 31 | 01:42 | Shipping has quadrupled in size since 1970. | ||
| 32 | 01:46 | We are more dependent on it now than ever. | ||
| 33 | 01:49 | And yet, for such an enormous industry -- | ||
| 34 | 01:53 | there are a 100,000 working vessels on the sea — | ||
| 35 | 01:56 | it's become pretty much invisible. | ||
| 36 | 02:00 | Now that sounds absurd in Singapore to say that, | ||
| 37 | 02:04 | because here shipping is so present | ||
| 38 | 02:06 | that you stuck a ship on top of a hotel. | ||
| 39 | 02:10 | (Laughter) | ||
| 40 | 02:11 | But elsewhere in the world, | ||
| 41 | 02:13 | if you ask the general public what they know | ||
| 42 | 02:16 | about shipping and how much trade is carried by sea, | ||
| 43 | 02:19 | you will get essentially a blank face. | ||
| 44 | 02:23 | You will ask someone on the street | ||
| 45 | 02:25 | if they've heard of Microsoft. | ||
| 46 | 02:27 | I should think they'll say yes, | ||
| 47 | 02:29 | because they'll know that they make software | ||
| 48 | 02:31 | that goes on computers, | ||
| 49 | 02:33 | and occasionally works. | ||
| 50 | 02:36 | But if you ask them if they've heard of Maersk, | ||
| 51 | 02:40 | I doubt you'd get the same response, | ||
| 52 | 02:42 | even though Maersk, | ||
| 53 | 02:44 | which is just one shipping company amongst many, | ||
| 54 | 02:47 | has revenues pretty much on a par with Microsoft. | ||
| 55 | 02:50 | [$60.2 billion] | ||
| 56 | 02:52 | Now why is this? | ||
| 57 | 02:54 | A few years ago, | ||
| 58 | 02:56 | the first sea lord of the British admiralty -- | ||
| 59 | 02:59 | he is called the first sea lord, | ||
| 60 | 03:01 | although the chief of the army is not called a land lord — | ||
| 61 | 03:05 | he said that we, and he meant | ||
| 62 | 03:08 | in the industrialized nations in the West, | ||
| 63 | 03:10 | that we suffer from sea blindness. | ||
| 64 | 03:14 | We are blind to the sea | ||
| 65 | 03:16 | as a place of industry or of work. | ||
| 66 | 03:19 | It's just something we fly over, | ||
| 67 | 03:21 | a patch of blue on an airline map. | ||
| 68 | 03:24 | Nothing to see, move along. | ||
| 69 | 03:27 | So I wanted to open my own eyes | ||
| 70 | 03:31 | to my own sea blindness, | ||
| 71 | 03:34 | so I ran away to sea. | ||
| 72 | 03:38 | A couple of years ago, I took a passage | ||
| 73 | 03:40 | on the Maersk Kendal, | ||
| 74 | 03:42 | a mid-sized container ship | ||
| 75 | 03:44 | carrying nearly 7,000 boxes, | ||
| 76 | 03:47 | and I departed from Felixstowe, | ||
| 77 | 03:49 | on the south coast of England, | ||
| 78 | 03:51 | and I ended up right here in Singapore | ||
| 79 | 03:53 | five weeks later, | ||
| 80 | 03:54 | considerably less jet-lagged than I am right now. | ||
| 81 | 03:59 | And it was a revelation. | ||
| 82 | 04:02 | We traveled through five seas, | ||
| 83 | 04:04 | two oceans, nine ports, | ||
| 84 | 04:07 | and I learned a lot about shipping. | ||
| 85 | 04:10 | And one of the first things that surprised me | ||
| 86 | 04:12 | when I got on board Kendal | ||
| 87 | 04:14 | was, where are all the people? | ||
| 88 | 04:17 | I have friends in the Navy who tell me | ||
| 89 | 04:18 | they sail with 1,000 sailors at a time, | ||
| 90 | 04:21 | but on Kendal there were only 21 crew. | ||
| 91 | 04:25 | Now that's because shipping is very efficient. | ||
| 92 | 04:28 | Containerization has made it very efficient. | ||
| 93 | 04:31 | Ships have automation now. | ||
| 94 | 04:33 | They can operate with small crews. | ||
| 95 | 04:36 | But it also means that, in the words | ||
| 96 | 04:37 | of a port chaplain I once met, | ||
| 97 | 04:40 | the average seafarer you're going to find | ||
| 98 | 04:42 | on a container ship is either tired or exhausted, | ||
| 99 | 04:46 | because the pace of modern shipping | ||
| 100 | 04:49 | is quite punishing for what the shipping calls | ||
| 101 | 04:51 | its human element, | ||
| 102 | 04:53 | a strange phrase which they don't seem to realize | ||
| 103 | 04:56 | sounds a little bit inhuman. | ||
| 104 | 04:58 | So most seafarers now working on container ships | ||
| 105 | 05:01 | often have less than two hours in port at a time. | ||
| 106 | 05:05 | They don't have time to relax. | ||
| 107 | 05:07 | They're at sea for months at a time, | ||
| 108 | 05:09 | and even when they're on board, | ||
| 109 | 05:10 | they don't have access to what | ||
| 110 | 05:12 | a five-year-old would take for granted, the Internet. | ||
| 111 | 05:16 | And another thing that surprised me when I got on board Kendal | ||
| 112 | 05:19 | was who I was sitting next to -- | ||
| 113 | 05:22 | Not the queen; I can't imagine why they put me underneath her portrait -- | ||
| 114 | 05:27 | But around that dining table in the officer's saloon, | ||
| 115 | 05:30 | I was sitting next to a Burmese guy, | ||
| 116 | 05:32 | I was opposite a Romanian, a Moldavian, an Indian. | ||
| 117 | 05:35 | On the next table was a Chinese guy, | ||
| 118 | 05:37 | and in the crew room, it was entirely Filipinos. | ||
| 119 | 05:40 | So that was a normal working ship. | ||
| 120 | 05:43 | Now how is that possible? | ||
| 121 | 05:45 | Because the biggest dramatic change | ||
| 122 | 05:47 | in shipping over the last 60 years, | ||
| 123 | 05:49 | when most of the general public stopped noticing it, | ||
| 124 | 05:51 | was something called an open registry, | ||
| 125 | 05:54 | or a flag of convenience. | ||
| 126 | 05:57 | Ships can now fly the flag of any nation | ||
| 127 | 05:59 | that provides a flag registry. | ||
| 128 | 06:02 | You can get a flag from the landlocked nation | ||
| 129 | 06:05 | of Bolivia, or Mongolia, | ||
| 130 | 06:07 | or North Korea, though that's not very popular. | ||
| 131 | 06:10 | (Laughter) | ||
| 132 | 06:11 | So we have these very multinational, | ||
| 133 | 06:13 | global, mobile crews on ships. | ||
| 134 | 06:18 | And that was a surprise to me. | ||
| 135 | 06:21 | And when we got to pirate waters, | ||
| 136 | 06:24 | down the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and into the Indian Ocean, | ||
| 137 | 06:27 | the ship changed. | ||
| 138 | 06:29 | And that was also shocking, because suddenly, | ||
| 139 | 06:32 | I realized, as the captain said to me, | ||
| 140 | 06:34 | that I had been crazy to choose to go | ||
| 141 | 06:36 | through pirate waters on a container ship. | ||
| 142 | 06:39 | We were no longer allowed on deck. | ||
| 143 | 06:41 | There were double pirate watches. | ||
| 144 | 06:44 | And at that time, there were those 544 seafarers being held hostage, | ||
| 145 | 06:48 | and some of them were held hostage for years | ||
| 146 | 06:50 | because of the nature of shipping and the flag of convenience. | ||
| 147 | 06:53 | Not all of them, but some of them were, | ||
| 148 | 06:55 | because for the minority of unscrupulous ship owners, | ||
| 149 | 07:00 | it can be easy to hide behind | ||
| 150 | 07:02 | the anonymity offered by some flags of convenience. | ||
| 151 | 07:07 | What else does our sea blindness mask? | ||
| 152 | 07:11 | Well, if you go out to sea on a ship | ||
| 153 | 07:13 | or on a cruise ship, and look up to the funnel, | ||
| 154 | 07:15 | you'll see very black smoke. | ||
| 155 | 07:18 | And that's because shipping | ||
| 156 | 07:21 | has very tight margins, and they want cheap fuel, | ||
| 157 | 07:23 | so they use something called bunker fuel, | ||
| 158 | 07:26 | which was described to me by someone in the tanker industry | ||
| 159 | 07:28 | as the dregs of the refinery, | ||
| 160 | 07:30 | or just one step up from asphalt. | ||
| 161 | 07:34 | And shipping is the greenest method of transport. | ||
| 162 | 07:37 | In terms of carbon emissions per ton per mile, | ||
| 163 | 07:39 | it emits about a thousandth of aviation | ||
| 164 | 07:42 | and about a tenth of trucking. | ||
| 165 | 07:44 | But it's not benign, because there's so much of it. | ||
| 166 | 07:48 | So shipping emissions are about three to four percent, | ||
| 167 | 07:50 | almost the same as aviation's. | ||
| 168 | 07:52 | And if you put shipping emissions | ||
| 169 | 07:54 | on a list of the countries' carbon emissions, | ||
| 170 | 07:57 | it would come in about sixth, | ||
| 171 | 07:59 | somewhere near Germany. | ||
| 172 | 08:01 | It was calculated in 2009 that the 15 largest ships | ||
| 173 | 08:05 | pollute in terms of particles and soot | ||
| 174 | 08:07 | and noxious gases | ||
| 175 | 08:09 | as much as all the cars in the world. | ||
| 176 | 08:11 | And the good news is that | ||
| 177 | 08:13 | people are now talking about sustainable shipping. | ||
| 178 | 08:15 | There are interesting initiatives going on. | ||
| 179 | 08:17 | But why has it taken so long? | ||
| 180 | 08:20 | When are we going to start talking and thinking | ||
| 181 | 08:22 | about shipping miles as well as air miles? | ||
| 182 | 08:26 | I also traveled to Cape Cod to look | ||
| 183 | 08:29 | at the plight of the North Atlantic right whale, | ||
| 184 | 08:33 | because this to me was one of the most surprising things | ||
| 185 | 08:35 | about my time at sea, | ||
| 186 | 08:37 | and what it made me think about. | ||
| 187 | 08:39 | We know about man's impact on the ocean | ||
| 188 | 08:42 | in terms of fishing and overfishing, | ||
| 189 | 08:44 | but we don't really know much about | ||
| 190 | 08:46 | what's happening underneath the water. | ||
| 191 | 08:48 | And in fact, shipping has a role to play here, | ||
| 192 | 08:51 | because shipping noise has contributed | ||
| 193 | 08:55 | to damaging the acoustic habitats of ocean creatures. | ||
| 194 | 08:58 | Light doesn't penetrate beneath the surface of the water, | ||
| 195 | 09:01 | so ocean creatures like whales and dolphins | ||
| 196 | 09:03 | and even 800 species of fish | ||
| 197 | 09:06 | communicate by sound. | ||
| 198 | 09:09 | And a North Atlantic right whale | ||
| 199 | 09:10 | can transmit across hundreds of miles. | ||
| 200 | 09:13 | A humpback can transmit a sound | ||
| 201 | 09:15 | across a whole ocean. | ||
| 202 | 09:17 | But a supertanker can also be heard | ||
| 203 | 09:19 | coming across a whole ocean, | ||
| 204 | 09:21 | and because the noise that propellers make underwater | ||
| 205 | 09:24 | is sometimes at the same frequency that whales use, | ||
| 206 | 09:27 | then it can damage their acoustic habitat, | ||
| 207 | 09:30 | and they need this for breeding, | ||
| 208 | 09:32 | for finding feeding grounds, | ||
| 209 | 09:34 | for finding mates. | ||
| 210 | 09:36 | And the acoustic habitat of the North Atlantic right whale | ||
| 211 | 09:39 | has been reduced by up to 90 percent. | ||
| 212 | 09:42 | But there are no laws governing acoustic pollution yet. | ||
| 213 | 09:47 | And when I arrived in Singapore, | ||
| 214 | 09:50 | and I apologize for this, but I didn't want to get off my ship. | ||
| 215 | 09:55 | I'd really loved being on board Kendal. | ||
| 216 | 09:58 | I'd been well treated by the crew, | ||
| 217 | 10:00 | I'd had a garrulous and entertaining captain, | ||
| 218 | 10:04 | and I would happily have signed up for another five weeks, | ||
| 219 | 10:08 | something that the captain also said | ||
| 220 | 10:09 | I was crazy to think about. | ||
| 221 | 10:12 | But I wasn't there for nine months at a time | ||
| 222 | 10:14 | like the Filipino seafarers, | ||
| 223 | 10:16 | who, when I asked them to describe their job to me, | ||
| 224 | 10:18 | called it "dollar for homesickness." | ||
| 225 | 10:21 | They had good salaries, | ||
| 226 | 10:22 | but theirs is still an isolating and difficult life | ||
| 227 | 10:25 | in a dangerous and often difficult element. | ||
| 228 | 10:29 | But when I get to this part, I'm in two minds, | ||
| 229 | 10:31 | because I want to salute those seafarers | ||
| 230 | 10:34 | who bring us 90 percent of everything | ||
| 231 | 10:36 | and get very little thanks or recognition for it. | ||
| 232 | 10:40 | I want to salute the 100,000 ships | ||
| 233 | 10:42 | that are at sea | ||
| 234 | 10:44 | that are doing that work, coming in and out | ||
| 235 | 10:46 | every day, bringing us what we need. | ||
| 236 | 10:49 | But I also want to see shipping, | ||
| 237 | 10:52 | and us, the general public, who know so little about it, | ||
| 238 | 10:56 | to have a bit more scrutiny, | ||
| 239 | 10:58 | to be a bit more transparent, | ||
| 240 | 11:00 | to have 90 percent transparency. | ||
| 241 | 11:03 | Because I think we could all benefit | ||
| 242 | 11:06 | from doing something very simple, | ||
| 243 | 11:08 | which is learning to see the sea. | ||
| 244 | 11:11 | Thank you. | ||
| 245 | 11:14 | (Applause) |