The focus this afternoon in this debate seems to have been mainly on cars, industry and individuals, and of course sensible efforts to reduce emissions from these sources are to be commended. However, there’s a far bigger polluter than cars or people.

There are approximately 90,000 cargo ships on the world’s seas. They burn 7.29 million barrels a day of the dirtiest and most polluting fuel left over from the oil refining process. The stuff is so dirty and heavy that you can walk on it when it’s cold. Cargo ships produce 260 times the pollution of the world’s cars each year. Because of that, Wales and the UK could shut down every facility producing carbon and other pollutants and take every car off the road and it wouldn’t even dent the amount of air pollution being created by these cargo ships.

Air pollution is a global problem and Wales and the UK need to work with the IMO and other global bodies to encourage the development and introduction of alternative means of fuelling these cargo ships or reducing the pollution in other ways, such as requiring cargo ships to be equipped with technology such as scrubbers, catalytic conversion and developing alternative energy sources. Otherwise we’re just trying to empty an ocean with a thimble.