Trade is the basis of the modern increasingly globalized economy. Gone are the days where we buy a majority of products made in our communities and cities or grown in neighborhood farms. Today, we buy products made and grown thousands of miles away in factories and farms on other continents that are then transported across the oceans on large ocean-going vessels.  Once they arrive at our ports, the cranes and forklifts go to work loading them onto the trucks and trains that will carry them to distribution centers where they will be loaded on even more trucks and trains for the final leg of their journey to our grocery stores, retailers, and dealerships. Along the way these machines of trade are powered by the dirty toxic bunker (ships) and diesel (trucks, trains, and cargo equipment) fuels that seriously impact our health and add enormous amounts of climate changing gases to our skies.

Ports are the hubs of trade where all these modes of transport can be found concentrated in one place literally spewing forth toxic smog clouds that envelope the surrounding communities and cities where we eat, sleep, work, and play. We live in a world where 60 percent of the global population lives in coastal areas and 80 percent of all trade is transported by sea. This is why the challenge to clean up our ports worldwide while also transitioning them to hubs of new fuels, technology and green infrastructure, not driven by oil, is such an urgent cause. Our societal well-being and potentially our survival depend on it.

Ideally, there should be one, cohesive international agreement on cleaning up the fuels, technology, and infrastructure of every port in the world, and there is progress but it is not happening fast enough.  In the meantime ports around the world are watching as Los Angeles and Long Beach (see here for more information on global clean port effort adoption) engage in their unprecedented efforts to make their ports driven by green technologies and sustainability. Their plans are the prototype to clean up the goods movement system, and global efforts to push for clean and green ports will be modeled after them. That is why CCP along with its allies and its members will continue to push hard for strong plans in Long Beach and Los Angeles so that they will catalyze a worldwide movement for clean ports.  The challenges are many, but the gains to be made in human safety, health and quality of life as well as environmental sustainability are without a doubt a global priority.