Ocean Rebellion Targets UN Maritime Agency With Demand for 50% Emissions Cut by 2030

Saying the International Maritime Organization is "unfit for purpose" due to its refusal to take far-reaching action to drastically draw down emissions from the shipping sector, the global campaign group Ocean Rebellion on Monday greeted delegates at the body's four-day summit with a visual representation of the shipping pollution that harms both marine and human life.

Outside the IMO's headquarters in London, the group displayed a puppet of an oil tanker "belching a vile black carbon fog of heavy fuel oil (HFO)," the dense oil that is used to power ships around the world and is linked to respiratory diseases, particularly in children.

A replica of a flaming Molotov oil drum, "representing the carbon bomb the IMO is planting under all our futures," was also on display at the protest, which the group titled "IMO, OMG, Just Do It."

Across the street, two campaigners dressed as shipping industry lobbyists unfurled a banner reading, "50% down by 2030=1.5 degrees."

Ocean Rebellion and other climate action groups are demanding that the IMO impose regulations that would reduce shipping emissions by 50% by 2030, which the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) said in 2021 is needed to support the Paris climate agreement's goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

The ICCT said that 2050—at the latest—should be the deadline set by the IMO for achieving zero "carbon dioxide equivalent" emissions, but the IMO, a United Nations agency, currently aims only to halve shipping emissions by then.

"This is an emergency," said Clive Russell, co-founder of Ocean Rebellion, which began as an art collective tied to the grassroots group Extinction Rebellion. "Our greenhouse gas emissions are setting off a chain of events tipping our environment and societies towards climate chaos. Every moment we fail to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and commodities we threaten the resilience of nature."

"With every day we fail to act, we approach dangerous tipping points with cascading knock-on impacts," he added. "There's no time to waste, we must act now."

The group noted that HFO is "so toxic its use is banned on land," with the highly acidic substance filled with nitrogen oxides, and "has been linked to 400,000 premature deaths worldwide per year (at a health cost of $50 billion)."

The IMO has proposed the use of "scrubbers," or an exhaust gas cleaning system, to allow for the continued use of HFO, but as the World Wildlife Fund said in 2020, scrubbers "don't eliminate air pollution—they just transform it into water pollution" by running on "a continuous flow of seawater that gets discharged into the ocean in a contaminated and acidic state."

"While still polluting the air the IMO is also now directly acidifying the sea—that's surely the definition of greenwash!" said Ocean Rebellion on Monday. "The IMO's 'solution' is a toxic solution."

Shipping companies have also been turning to so-called liquefied "natural" gas (LNG) to power vessels, which they claim will reduce their environmental impact.

LNG, however, leaks planet-heating methane, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made clear must be urgently reduced in the atmosphere to mitigate the climate emergency.

According to Ocean Rebellion, more than 785 cargo ships are currently being built, and over 400 will run on liquefied fossil gas. Those ships would increase global methane emissions, which rose 150% between 2012 and 2018.

Despite claims by shipmakers that LNG is "natural" and a clean alternative to HFO, said Ocean Rebellion spokesperson Andrew Darnton, LNG is "not a solution, it's just madness."

"It's a fossil fuel. The U.N. IPCC has warned us we need to reduce fossil fuel use—how does building infrastructure to use more fossil fuels help us?" said Darnton. "Governments must stop listening to industry and start listening to the scientists, they're all saying the same thing—CUT FOSSIL FUELS."

The group demanded that the agency "follow the science and commit to [halving] ship emissions by 2030" by:

• Requiring ships to slow down;
• Prioritizing wind power for ships, new and old;
• Speeding up the roll-out of new climate-friendly fuels; and
• Steeply pricing the carbon in shipping fuels.