⬆️ Scrubby gets ready to paste posters to the windows of the UN IMO.
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The UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO) 2nd Extraordinary Session is meeting this week. It is a meeting where IMO delegates and Member States will be finalising plans to regulate shipping pollution.

To mark this special occasion we thought we’d remind them that not all shipping emissions are treated equally. In fact some might not be considered at all. Last week Shell announced plans to extract more liquefied natural gas – the fuel the oil, gas and shipping industry is lobbying to be exempt from IMO shipping pollution regulations.

⬆️ Window redecoration is go!
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⬆️ Why are there posters on the window? It’s to remind UN IMO Member States and delegates that all fossil fuels should be treated equally. After all ‘Liquefied Natural Gas ❤️ Greenwashing’ only when LNG escapes planned shipping pollution regulations.
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⬆️ Here comes Scrubby with another poster.
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At 18:00hrs, while delegates were enjoying canapés and sipping wine, a ‘Scrubby the greenwashing Sponge’ appeared at the window of their reception holding a poster. A poster containing the graphic message ‘LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS LOVES GREENWASHING’. The precarious Scrubby, operating on a long 4 metre pole, pasted the poster onto the window, giving everyone inside the opportunity to applaud its wonderful skills. It then bobbed down to the ground to pick up another poster to repeat the process until the IMO windows were obscured. 

⬆️ Time to take a closer look at who has been greenwashing LNG. You don’t have to look far, the membership of MAR/GNL provides a full list of scoundrels. Oil and Gas can’t be a part of ‘The Future of Shipping’. If the UN IMO is serious about reducing pollution shipping must stop using fossil fuels.
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Scrubby represents the blatant greenwashing that will give LNG a free pass to avoid any MEPC plans to include LNG in shipping pollution regulations / tax levies – making LNG the go to fossil fuel for shipping (while still accelerating dangerous emissions and obscene profits for the fossil fuel and shipping industries). ‘Scrubby the greenwashing Sponge’ was keen to make sure El futuro del transporte marítimo mensaje en nombre de SEALNG.ORG was seen by all IMO Delegates and Member States.

After all Scrubby didn’t want its employers, the fossil fuel and shipping industries, to miss out on a chance to greenwash LNG ahead of the MEPC discussions on shipping fuel levies (which companies like CMA CGM y Exxon Mobil as well as classification societies like DNV y ABS hope LNG can avoid by selling itself as the ‘green’ fuel it certainly isn’t).

⬆️ Delegates take photos of the posters.
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The performance celebrates the rampant puppetry at large in MEPC meetings. Meetings dominated by the interests of the shipping industry, an industry intent on cementing its romance with the oil and gas industry by adopting dirty LNG as its fuel of choice. This is despite recent research which has exposed the lies of industrial lobbying platforms like MAR/GNL. La investigación revisada por expertos reveals that LNG extracted and exported from the US is 33% more polluting than coal, vying for the title of most lethal of the fossil fuels. Methane leaks occur throughout the LNG extraction and supply process increasing mortality levels and causing health problems. And LNG extraction destroys land and coastal communities dondequiera que aparezca una planta de GNL. Estas mismas fugas continúan a bordo Buques propulsados por GNL, helping accelerate climate collapse and the collapse of our economies. To cover up this uncomfortable truth the industry trumpets biometano y e-metano products that are only 6% of the EU market and even less worldwide (and both still leak methane throughout their supply chains and, in the case of biomethane, use up land resources and bump up food scarcity and prices). The industrial scale of LNG greenwashing has converted the UN IMO MEPC into a puppet for the oil and gas industry.

⬆️ “This is private land, please leave now!!!”
“I’ll try sir, but please be careful on the wet floor, it’s rather slippy.”
“Just leave, get off this land, you are committing soft trespass.”
“I will if you remove the barrier, my hip’s not so good and I can’t get over it…”
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Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) – los hechos
El GNL es un combustible fósil que, cuando se extrae, se transporta y se quema como combustible marino, deja escapar metano a la atmósfera, un gas peligroso para el calentamiento global que está sobre 80 veces más calentamiento del clima in the short-term (20 years) than carbon dioxide. 

El Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC) de la ONU identificado la rápida reducción de las emisiones de metano como una de las principales prioridades para limitar el calentamiento global a un nivel lo más cercano posible a 1,5°C. El IPCC último informe centrarse en la mitigación del clima deja claro que el gas fósil en forma de GNL no es una solución para la descarbonización del transporte marítimo.

Contrariamente a lo que exige la climatología, las compañías navieras y portuarias han ido a toda máquina a popa, invirtiendo fuertemente en GNL fósil, alegando que el combustible reducirá su impacto medioambiental y la contaminación climática. Actualmente hay más de 785 nuevos cargueros encargados en todo el mundo, de los cuales más de 400 se están construyendo para funcionar con GNL fósil sucio.

Burning more fossil LNG onboard vessels is a disaster in the making for our planet. It would only increase methane emissions from ships, which already rose by 180% between 2016 and 2023, according to a recent International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT) report.

Las emisiones de metano también disminuyen la calidad del aire. Además, el aumento de la demanda de GNL -incluido el sector marítimo- provoca efectos adversos en tierra, como la contaminación del agua potable, la reducción de la producción agrícola y el aumento de las tasas de mortalidad prematura. 

⬆️ Regulating shipping pollution is hungry work, unfortunately the canapés didn’t find their way outdoors.
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Necesitamos una normativa estricta sobre el metano en la OMI
Según la IPCC (AR6)Para hacer frente a la emergencia climática y a sus devastadores efectos sobre las personas es necesario abordar urgentemente las emisiones de metano a corto plazo. Los defensores del GNL están engañando a los responsables políticos sobre la magnitud real de sus impactos en el clima y la salud, al tiempo que ponen en peligro un futuro de supervivencia en este planeta. 

La Organización Marítima Internacional (OMI) es el organismo de las Naciones Unidas que regula el transporte marítimo internacional. En la actualidad, no existe ninguna normativa internacional específica para las emisiones de metano de los buques. However, several opportunities exist to comprehensively integrate methane into the IMO’s regulatory framework during the Marine Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC82). If this doesn’t happen we propose a more drastic future for the IMO.

⬆️ “Look at that poster the puppet stuck to the window!”
“Does it mean we’re complicit in greenwashing?”
Yes is it does, and so is the UN IMO if it doesn’t regulate methane (the leaky byproduct of LNG) along with other fossil fuels.
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Llamamiento a la acción en la OMI:
El GNL es un combustible fósil que afecta negativamente a las personas, el medio ambiente y el clima en todas las fases de su ciclo de vida. 

Exigimos:
1. Las emisiones de metano se consideran un gas de efecto invernadero y se incluyen en cualquier plan del MEPC para gravar el transporte marítimo con un impuesto sobre el carbono, ponderado por el exceso de capacidad de forzamiento climático del metano fugitivo.

2. The Member States of the IMO recognise LNG as a fossil fuel and stop being misled by the GNL MARINO los grupos de presión, excluyéndolos de la OMI. 

3. The IMO to promote efficiency and the use of slow steaming, capacity reduction and embarcaciones de vela y propulsión eléctrica incentivando la incorporación al sector del transporte marítimo, capacitando y mejorando las cualificaciones de los trabajadores e introduciendo rutas marítimas más justas.

Si la OMI no actúa Océano Rebelión demandas:

The UN must form a new, transparent, and representative body to govern the Ocean for the benefit of ALL life. This new body must have the restoration and replenishment of the Ocean on which all our lives depend as its only measure of success. It should replace corporate power with people power. And it should represent the many forms of marine life who actually make the ocean a home.

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Photos by S. Staines.

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