⬆️ 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 MARE/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 Il futuro del trasporto marittimo messaggio a nome di 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 e Exxon Mobil as well as classification societies like DNV e 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 MARE/GNL. La ricerca con revisione paritaria 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 ovunque appaia un impianto di GNL. Queste stesse perdite continuano a bordo Navi alimentate a GNL, helping accelerate climate collapse and the collapse of our economies. To cover up this uncomfortable truth the industry trumpets biometano e 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) – i fatti
Il GNL è un combustibile fossile che, quando viene estratto, trasportato e bruciato come combustibile marino, rilascia nell'atmosfera il metano, un pericoloso gas che provoca il riscaldamento globale e che è più che sufficiente a ridurre il consumo di carburante. 80 volte in più di riscaldamento climatico in the short-term (20 years) than carbon dioxide. 

Il Gruppo intergovernativo di esperti sul cambiamento climatico (IPCC) delle Nazioni Unite identificato una rapida riduzione delle emissioni di metano come una delle principali priorità per limitare il riscaldamento globale a un valore il più possibile vicino a 1,5°C. Il rapporto dell'IPCC ultimo rapporto concentrandosi sulla mitigazione del clima chiarisce che il gas fossile sotto forma di GNL non è una soluzione per la decarbonizzazione del trasporto marittimo.

Contrariamente a quanto richiesto dalla scienza del clima, le compagnie di navigazione e portuali sono andate a tutta birra, investire pesantemente nel GNL fossile, sostenendo che il carburante ridurrà il loro impatto ambientale e l'inquinamento climatico. Attualmente sono in ordine oltre 785 nuove navi da carico a livello globale, di cui oltre 400 costruite per funzionare con GNL fossile sporco.

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.

Le emissioni di metano riducono anche la qualità dell'aria. Inoltre, l'aumento della domanda di GNL, anche nel settore marino, comporta impatti negativi sulla terraferma, come l'inquinamento dell'acqua potabile, la riduzione della produzione agricola e l'aumento dei tassi di mortalità prematura. 

⬆️ Regulating shipping pollution is hungry work, unfortunately the canapés didn’t find their way outdoors.
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Servono norme forti sul metano all'IMO
Secondo il IPCC (AR6)Per affrontare l'emergenza climatica e i suoi impatti devastanti sulle persone è necessario affrontare con urgenza le emissioni di metano nel breve periodo. I sostenitori del GNL stanno ingannando i politici sulle reali dimensioni dell'impatto climatico e sanitario del GNL, mettendo a rischio un futuro di sopravvivenza su questo pianeta. 

L'Organizzazione Marittima Internazionale (IMO) è l'organismo delle Nazioni Unite che regolamenta la navigazione internazionale. Attualmente non esistono normative internazionali specifiche per le emissioni di metano delle navi. 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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Invito all'azione presso l'IMO:
Il GNL è un combustibile fossile che ha un impatto negativo sulle persone, sull'ambiente e sul clima in ogni fase del suo ciclo di vita. 

Noi chiediamo:
1. Le emissioni di metano sono considerate un gas a effetto serra e sono incluse in qualsiasi piano del MEPC per l'imposizione di una carbon tax sul trasporto marittimo, ponderata in base alla capacità di forzatura climatica in eccesso del metano fuggitivo.

2. The Member States of the IMO recognise LNG as a fossil fuel and stop being misled by the SEA LNG lobbisti, chiudendoli invece fuori dall'IMO. 

3. The IMO to promote efficiency and the use of slow steaming, capacity reduction and imbarcazioni a vela e a propulsione elettrica incentivando l'adozione nel settore del trasporto marittimo, responsabilizzando e qualificando i lavoratori e introducendo rotte di trasporto più eque.

Se l'IMO non agisce la ribellione oceanica lo richiede:

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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