Practical responses to climate change

LAST week's column looked at the political responses to the International Maritime Organization's (IMO) latest meeting considering how to achieve massive cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships.

One of the criticisms of IMO was that it didn't take what has been portrayed as the easy way to make big cuts in GHGs, by Imposing mandatory speed restrictions on ships. This proposal had been put forward in a letter to IMO signed by nine environmental non- government organisation and 120 shipping companies.

The letter said: "Our preference would be to set maximum annual average speeds for container ships, and maximum absolute speeds for the remaining ship types, which take account of minimum …