Ships Pollute Air

Whenever you see a ship in port, the idling ship's smokestack continue to spew a raft of pollutants such as sulfur oxides into the air in order to power all the lighting, pumping, refrigeration and other ship functions while the valuable cargo is unloaded. There are, however, a growing concern for this. Two of BP’s (formerly British Petroleum) large, ocean-going oil tankers are going to be retrofitted with a more environmentally friendly "cold ironing" system that will allow the ships to be plugged into electrical outlets on shore and shut off their polluting smokestacks, according to The Newsletter of the North American Commision forEnvironmental Cooperation.

"Obviously if such a system makes sense here we’ll start working on doing it in other places," says BP spokesman Phil Cochrane. He adds that in addition to being an environmental solution, BP will be doing an economic analysis about whether the program could save the oil company money over the long term.

I wonder if that means that ships all over the world are polluting the air until the BP's "pilot project" is ready to be used in other ports?