Thanks for that

Edit: On thinking about this tangent, it seems that if global regulation is the only solution, it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries), rather than the wrecking side (in developing countries) which will only displace the bad practices to less scrupulous countries. A solution might be sizable amount of money that had to be paid to escrow that could not be released back to the owner until the ship has been disposed of in an environmentally sound manner, incentivizing and funding the proper scrapping of ships. Or perhaps a levy which funds safety practices and equipment for scrapping companies

>it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries)

Most ships are built in Asia as well. The US basically doesn't have any sort of non-military ship building industry.

Sure. But the reputable multinational corporations that dominate the industry are easy to recognize and they’re headquartered in developed countries

The ownership structure for ships used in international shipping is anything but straightforward. For instance, for the the MV Dali (the ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge) you might think we can go after Maersk, but in reality they're only chartering it. It was actually built by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea for a Greek company but later sold to a Singaporean company, operated by a different Singaporean company, and crewed by 20 Indians and 1 Sri Lankan. In this complex web of ownership/relationships how do you exactly "enforce regulation from the ship building side "?

Well as I (naively) suggested whoever owns the actual ship (and thus disposes of it) can claim on an escrow that isn't released until the ship has been verifiable disposed of in an environmentally sound fashion. So if the ship ever is sold to another party, that would be built into the purchase cost (that they could claim this money), even to the final purchaser (the wreckers). Probably some huge loophole or perverse incentive that I haven't thought of, but that's at least one suggestion.

Globalization was largely a response to environmental movements in the U.S. We offshored our pollution generation.

Also industrial safety, worker hours, etc

You don't always even need to move things out-of-county to do regulatory arbitrage. For example Uber and Airbnb.

Uh, really? I was certain that the aftermath of WWII was responsible for establishing a form of global governance (by consensus) via the UN, and then there’s the benefits of free trade agreements that drove economic globalization.

The free trade agreements came after the environmental movements. Claiming environmental movements caused this is too strong a claim. But it is not entirely a coincidence that one followed the other.

Specifically what movements and when? It’s a strange claim that globalization was caused (or even accelerated) by environmental movements. Certainly the UN came before the environmental movements of the 60s/70s. The World Bank and IMF were also established soon after the conclusion of WWII. The wiki article for globalization makes just a couple of off hand mentions of environmental issues. I’ve only ever heard of globalization in an economic context, and I think by convention this is the lens most people view it by

When Americans clamored for rivers that didn’t catch fire and for smog in LA to go away it became clear to corporations that it would be much cheaper and better for profits if they setup factories in poor countries that didn’t require them to stop egregiously polluting. Thus began the momentum for free trade agreements and breaking down of trade barriers.

I used the term “globalization” as a proxy for free trade. That was bad on my part.

I can see how environmental policy could accelerate this phenomena, but surely the asymmetry of labor costs and cheaper/faster shipping is reason enough to offshore labor? Economical shipping seems to be the enabler, and miserly humans, as ever, the cause

Is there a tl;dw? That's an hour long video.

Due to heavy regulations on the shipbreaking industry in Western countries, > 50% of ships worldwide are (or were, when the documentary was made) dismantled in Alang, India.

The industry is extremely polluting (to the environment and the workers) and the working conditions (incl. safety) are dire to put it nicely.

Thank you, appreciate it.