Per tonne-mile carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are among the lowest of all freight options, but with the large volumes transported, shipping accounts for about three per cent of global emissions.

Fuel used is very polluting, with almost no regulation. Over 1000 containers are lost at sea every year.

RECENT ECO NEWS COLUMNS:

Modern shipping has become incomprehensibly efficient and cheap. It is the physical equivalent of the internet, making globalisation possible.

The internet abolishes national boundaries for information; shipping abolishes these boundaries for physical goods.

Shipping has become effectively free, adding at most a few cents to the price of most goods on our shelves. This has had the effect of abolishing geography and location as an economic factor.

For most goods, there is no advantage in siting production anywhere near your customers. Instead, you make whatever it is where it is cheapest.

The invention of the shipping container in the US revolutionised shipping. The "TEU", or 20 foot equivalent unit, now dominates the world of shipping and transport.

The first container ship set sail in 1956 carrying 58 containers. The largest Korean ships now carry 24,000 TEU. Factories no longer need to be near ports.

Containers get rid of the need for labour, replacing it with a mostly automated process, both on board ship, and in ports.

The biggest container ships are over 400 metres long, crewed by fewer than 25 people. As labour force has shrunk it has become non-unionised, more international.

Modern patterns of ship ownership have become incomprehensibly complex. The Ever Given is typical: built by a Japanese company, owned by a subsidiary of that company, leased to a Taiwanese company, operated by a German company, flies under flag of Panama, crewed by Indian nationals.

National law of a nation applies up to 12 miles from the coast; further out, the ship is governed by the law of its flag. In practice, this means no law at all, with little or no safety and labour standards.

More than 2000 seafarers die every year, with no scrutiny.

The opaque ownership structures make it often impossible to determine responsibility for accidents. After an oil tanker sank off the coast of France in 1999, causing an environmental catastrophe, the French Government was unable to penetrate the 12 layers of shell companies.

We must all consume less, use what's locally available, and insist that our governments co-operate to develop new regulatory bodies for shipping.