The World in 2030

122 The World in 2030
years to the peak of the cycle in the third quarter of
2005. That led to a splurge in orders for new, larger
ships. 239
Perhaps one of the best places in the world to witness for
yourself the impact of ships’ greenhouse gas emissions
is Istanbul. The beautiful old city sits either side of the
narrowest shipping lane in the world, the Bosphorus, a strait
which links the almost completely enclosed Black sea to the
Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean beyond.
For all of the rapidly developing countries around the
Black Sea – Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine, Georgia, and
Northern Turkey itself – the Bosphorus (which at places is
only 700 metres wide) offers the only access channel for
tankers and container ships. Every ten minutes huge cargo
vessels pass in each direction, piloted by local watermen and
controlled by a marine equivalent of an air traffic control
system. All of them belch out large quantities of CO 2
, SOx 240
and NOx 241 .
Istanbul already has a serious pollution crisis as its twelve
million inhabitants attempt to get around their vast city.
The transport infrastructure is poor because of a difficult
topography, earthquake risk and chronic long-term underinvestment.
There is almost no metro system and the ancient
ferry boats which criss-cross the Bosphorus add their noxious
outpourings to those of millions of cars and the giant cargo
vessels and cruise liners which sail through the strait.
As a result of all this shipping and heavily-jammed road
transportation beautiful Istanbul is choking to death inside