You're placing the blame on the wrong thing - The embodied energy of producing most of the things we consume is much higher than the energy of shipping. Shipping on a massive container ship is really impressively efficient. (Shipping by air is a very different matter, of course)

You can see the same thing if you look at the energy cost of food shipping: perishable goods like asparagus are shipped in refrigerated planes, and the added energy of shipping is huge, whereas bananas are shipped on cargo ships.

https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode

For example