A couple of years ago, Harvard Business School chose the best business model of that year. It chose Somali piracy. Pretty much around the same time, I discovered that there were 544 seafarers being held hostage on ships, often anchored just off the Somali coast in plain sight.
Pre par godina, Harvardski poslovni fakultet odabrao je najbolji poslovni model za tu godinu. Odabrali su somalijske pirate. Otprilike u isto vreme, otkrila sam da su 544 pomorca držali kao taoce na brodovima, često ukotvljene u blizini somalijske obale, takoreći pod nosom.
And I learned these two facts, and I thought, what's going on in shipping? And I thought, would that happen in any other industry? Would we see 544 airline pilots held captive in their jumbo jets on a runway for months, or a year? Would we see 544 Greyhound bus drivers? It wouldn't happen.
Saznala sam te dve stvari i pomislila šta se to dešava sa brodskim transportom? Da li bi se isto desilo u nekoj drugoj industriji? Da li bi 544 pilota držali zarobljene u džambo-džetovima na pisti mesecima ili čak godinu dana? Ili 544 vozača autobusa? To se ne bi desilo.
So I started to get intrigued. And I discovered another fact, which to me was more astonishing almost for the fact that I hadn't known it before at the age of 42, 43. That is how fundamentally we still depend on shipping. Because perhaps the general public thinks of shipping as an old-fashioned industry, something brought by sailboat with Moby Dicks and Jack Sparrows. But shipping isn't that. Shipping is as crucial to us as it has ever been. Shipping brings us 90 percent of world trade. Shipping has quadrupled in size since 1970. We are more dependent on it now than ever. And yet, for such an enormous industry -- there are a 100,000 working vessels on the sea — it's become pretty much invisible.
Tako sam se zainteresovala za temu i otkrila još jednu činjenicu zbog koje sam bila toliko zapanjena jer je nisam znala do svoje 42-43. godine. A to je da i dalje jako zavisimo od brodskog transporta. Možda opšta populacija misli da je brodski transport zastarela industrija, da Mobi Dik i Džek Sperou dovoze stvari jedrilicama. Brodski transport nije takav. On nam je danas jednako bitan kao i ranije. Brodovi prevoze 90% svetske robe. Od 1970. količina se učetvorostručila. Sada od brodova zavisimo više nego ikada. Ipak, tako ogromna industrija - koja radi sa 100 000 brodova - postala je skoro nevidljiva.
Now that sounds absurd in Singapore to say that, because here shipping is so present that you stuck a ship on top of a hotel. (Laughter) But elsewhere in the world, if you ask the general public what they know about shipping and how much trade is carried by sea, you will get essentially a blank face. You will ask someone on the street if they've heard of Microsoft. I should think they'll say yes, because they'll know that they make software that goes on computers, and occasionally works. But if you ask them if they've heard of Maersk, I doubt you'd get the same response, even though Maersk, which is just one shipping company amongst many, has revenues pretty much on a par with Microsoft. [$60.2 billion]
Reći tako nešto u Singapuru zvuči apsurdno jer su brodovi ovde toliko prisutni da ih ima i na krovovima hotela. (Smeh) Ali, u svetu ako opštu populaciju pitate šta zna o brodovima i koliko se robe prevozi brodovima, uglavnom ćete čuti muk. Ako nekoga na ulici pitate da li su čuli za Majkrosoft trebalo bi da kažu da jer znaju da oni proizvode softver za računar i da obično radi. Ali ako ih pitate da li su čuli za Mersk, čisto sumnjam da će isto odgovoriti, iako Mersk, koji je samo jedna od brojnih brodskih kompanija, ima skoro isti prihod kao Majkrosoft. [60 milijardi američkih dolara]
Now why is this? A few years ago, the first sea lord of the British admiralty -- he is called the first sea lord, although the chief of the army is not called a land lord — he said that we, and he meant in the industrialized nations in the West, that we suffer from sea blindness. We are blind to the sea as a place of industry or of work. It's just something we fly over, a patch of blue on an airline map. Nothing to see, move along.
A zašto? Pre nekoliko godina, prvi pomorski zapovednik Britanske mornarice - zove se prvi morski zapovednik iako se glavnokomandujući u vojsci ne zove zemljani zapovednik - rekao je da mi, misleći na zapadne industrijalizovane države, da patimo od „morskog slepila“. Ne vidimo more kao industrijsko ili radno mesto. More je nešto iznad čega letimo, parče plavetnila na karti avionskih puteva. Nema šta da se vidi, nastavite dalje.
So I wanted to open my own eyes to my own sea blindness, so I ran away to sea. A couple of years ago, I took a passage on the Maersk Kendal, a mid-sized container ship carrying nearly 7,000 boxes, and I departed from Felixstowe, on the south coast of England, and I ended up right here in Singapore five weeks later, considerably less jet-lagged than I am right now. And it was a revelation. We traveled through five seas, two oceans, nine ports, and I learned a lot about shipping.
Ja sam htela da otvorim svoje oči, da izlečim svoje morsko slepilo, pa sam pobegla na more. Pre nekoliko godina, pošla sam na putovanje brodom Mersk Kendal, teretnim brodom srednje veličine koji je prevozio skoro 7000 sanduka. Otisnula sam se iz Felikstoa na južnoj obali Engleske, a završila sam baš ovde u Singapuru nakon pet nedelja, znatno manje umorna od putovanja nego sada. Put brodom je bio pravo otkrovenje. Prešli smo pet mora, dva okeana, devet luka, i mnogo sam naučila o brodskom transportu.
And one of the first things that surprised me when I got on board Kendal was, where are all the people? I have friends in the Navy who tell me they sail with 1,000 sailors at a time, but on Kendal there were only 21 crew. Now that's because shipping is very efficient. Containerization has made it very efficient. Ships have automation now. They can operate with small crews. But it also means that, in the words of a port chaplain I once met, the average seafarer you're going to find on a container ship is either tired or exhausted, because the pace of modern shipping is quite punishing for what the shipping calls its human element, a strange phrase which they don't seem to realize sounds a little bit inhuman. So most seafarers now working on container ships often have less than two hours in port at a time. They don't have time to relax. They're at sea for months at a time, and even when they're on board, they don't have access to what a five-year-old would take for granted, the Internet.
Jedna od prvih stvari koje su me iznenadile kada sam se našla na palubi broda Kendal bilo je to što nema ljudi. Gde su svi? Prijatelji iz britanske mornarice mi kažu da plove zajedno sa 1000 mornara, ali na brodu Kendal bio je samo 21 član posade. To je tako zato što je brodski transport vrlo efikasan. Pakovanje robe u kontejnere ga je učinilo takvim. Brodovi su sada automatizovani. Mogu da rade s malom posadom. Ali, to znači da je, rečima jednog lučkog kapelana kojeg sam jednom upoznala, prosečan pomorac na teretnom brodu ili umoran ili iscrpljen, zato što ritam modernog brodskog transporta nije nimalo blagonaklon prema onome što se na moru zove ljudski faktor, što je čudan naziv za koji ljudi ne shvataju da ne zvuči nimalo ljudski. Većina pomoraca koji sada rade na teretnim brodovima u lukama često provedu manje od dva sata. Nemaju vremena za odmor. Na moru su mesecima, i čak i kada su na palubi nemaju pristup onome što čak i petogodišnjaci uzimaju zdravo za gotovo - pristup internetu.
And another thing that surprised me when I got on board Kendal was who I was sitting next to -- Not the queen; I can't imagine why they put me underneath her portrait -- But around that dining table in the officer's saloon, I was sitting next to a Burmese guy, I was opposite a Romanian, a Moldavian, an Indian. On the next table was a Chinese guy, and in the crew room, it was entirely Filipinos. So that was a normal working ship.
Još jedna stvar koja me je iznenadila na brodu Kendal bilo je to pored koga sedim - ne pored britanske kraljice; ne znam zašto su me poseli ispod njenog portreta - za stolom u brodskoj trpezariji sedela sam pored čoveka iz Mjanmara, preko puta mene su bili Rumun, Moldavac, Indijac. Za drugim stolom je bio Kinez, a u kabinama su bili FIlipinci. Tako izgleda običan brod.
Now how is that possible? Because the biggest dramatic change in shipping over the last 60 years, when most of the general public stopped noticing it, was something called an open registry, or a flag of convenience. Ships can now fly the flag of any nation that provides a flag registry. You can get a flag from the landlocked nation of Bolivia, or Mongolia, or North Korea, though that's not very popular. (Laughter)
Kako je to moguće? Tako što je najveća promena koja se u zadnjih 60 godina desila u brodskom transportu, kada je opšta populacija prestala da ga primećuje, nešto što se zove „otvoren pristup“, ili „zastava pogodnosti“. Brodovi sada mogu da plove pod zastavom bilo koje države koja to dozvoljava. Možete ploviti pod zastavom udaljene Bolivije, Mongolije, Severne Koreje, iako nije baš popularna. (Smeh)
So we have these very multinational, global, mobile crews on ships. And that was a surprise to me. And when we got to pirate waters, down the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and into the Indian Ocean, the ship changed. And that was also shocking, because suddenly, I realized, as the captain said to me, that I had been crazy to choose to go through pirate waters on a container ship. We were no longer allowed on deck. There were double pirate watches. And at that time, there were those 544 seafarers being held hostage, and some of them were held hostage for years because of the nature of shipping and the flag of convenience. Not all of them, but some of them were, because for the minority of unscrupulous ship owners, it can be easy to hide behind the anonymity offered by some flags of convenience.
Zato su na brodovima multinacionalne, globalne, pokretljive posade. To me je iznenadilo. Kada smo zašli u piratske vode, iz moreuza Bab-el-Mandeb ka Indijskom okeanu, brod se promenio. To je takođe bilo šokantno jer sam iznenada shvatila, kada mi je kapetan rekao, da sam luda što putujem teretnim brodom kroz piratske vode. Nije nam više bilo dozvoljeno da izađemo na palubu. Duple straže su pazile na opasnost od pirata. U to vreme su kao taoce držali 544 pomorca, neke čak godinama, zbog same prirode brodskog transporta i „zastave pogodnosti“. Ne sve, ali neke, jer je manjini beskrupuloznih vlasnika brodova lako da sakriju anonimnost koju „zastave pogodnosti“ pružaju.
What else does our sea blindness mask? Well, if you go out to sea on a ship or on a cruise ship, and look up to the funnel, you'll see very black smoke. And that's because shipping has very tight margins, and they want cheap fuel, so they use something called bunker fuel, which was described to me by someone in the tanker industry as the dregs of the refinery, or just one step up from asphalt. And shipping is the greenest method of transport. In terms of carbon emissions per ton per mile, it emits about a thousandth of aviation and about a tenth of trucking. But it's not benign, because there's so much of it. So shipping emissions are about three to four percent, almost the same as aviation's. And if you put shipping emissions on a list of the countries' carbon emissions, it would come in about sixth, somewhere near Germany. It was calculated in 2009 that the 15 largest ships pollute in terms of particles and soot and noxious gases as much as all the cars in the world. And the good news is that people are now talking about sustainable shipping. There are interesting initiatives going on. But why has it taken so long? When are we going to start talking and thinking about shipping miles as well as air miles?
Šta još maskira naše morsko slepilo? Ako se nađete na brodu ili krstarici, i ako pogledate u odžak, videćete crn dim. Brodski transport zahteva rigorozne mere, jeftino gorivo, pa se zato koristi tzv. bunkersko gorivo, koje mi je neko iz tankerske industrije opisao kao talog iz rafinerije, ili sestra asfalta. Brodski transport je „najzelenija“ vrsta transporta. U pogledu emitovanja ugljenika po toni i milji, brodovi emituju skoro kao hiljaditi deo avio-prevoza i deseti deo kamionskog prevoza. I to nije nimalo naivno, jer ih ima puno. Emisija ugljenika na brodovima je od 3 do 4%, skoro kao u avio-prevozu. Ako se emisije ugljenika nastale brodskim transportom stave na listu zemalja koje ga isto emituju, biće na šestom mestu, negde kod Nemačke. 2009. godine je izračunato da 15 najvećih brodova zagađuju česticama, čađi i izduvnim gasovima kao svi automobili na svetu zajedno. Dobra vest je da sada ljudi pričaju o održivom brodskom transportu. Pojavile su se zanimljive inicijative. Ali zašto je toliko vremena trebalo? Kada ćemo početi da pričamo i razmišljamo o morskim miljama kao o vazdušnim?
I also traveled to Cape Cod to look at the plight of the North Atlantic right whale, because this to me was one of the most surprising things about my time at sea, and what it made me think about. We know about man's impact on the ocean in terms of fishing and overfishing, but we don't really know much about what's happening underneath the water. And in fact, shipping has a role to play here, because shipping noise has contributed to damaging the acoustic habitats of ocean creatures. Light doesn't penetrate beneath the surface of the water, so ocean creatures like whales and dolphins and even 800 species of fish communicate by sound. And a North Atlantic right whale can transmit across hundreds of miles. A humpback can transmit a sound across a whole ocean. But a supertanker can also be heard coming across a whole ocean, and because the noise that propellers make underwater is sometimes at the same frequency that whales use, then it can damage their acoustic habitat, and they need this for breeding, for finding feeding grounds, for finding mates. And the acoustic habitat of the North Atlantic right whale has been reduced by up to 90 percent. But there are no laws governing acoustic pollution yet.
Takođe sam putovala u zaliv Kejp Kod da vidim nevolju severnoatlantskog kita usana, jer mi je to jedna od najčudnijih stvari koje sam doživela na moru, i kako me je to nateralo da razmislim. Znamo da čovek utiče na okean tako što lovi ribu, čak i previše, ali ne znamo puno o tome šta se dešava ispod površine vode. Zapravo, tu brodski transport igra posebnu ulogu, zato što buka motora brodova doprinosi oštećivanju zvučnog staništa morskih stvorenja. Svetlost ne dopire ispod površine vode, tako da morska stvorenja poput kitova i delfina i čak 800 vrsta ribe komuniciraju putem zvuka. Severnoatlantski kit usan može da se čuje na skoro 150 km. Pesma grbavog kita se čuje preko celog okeana. Ali i supertanker se takođe čuje kako dolazi preko celog okeana, i zbog podvodnog zvuka propelera nekad je na istoj frekvenciji kao kitovi, što može da ošteti njihovo zvučno stanište koje je njima potrebno radi parenja, nalaženja hrane i partnera. A zvučno stanište severnoatlantskog kita usana smanjeno je do 90%. Još uvek nema zakona koji regulišu zvučno zagađenje.
And when I arrived in Singapore, and I apologize for this, but I didn't want to get off my ship. I'd really loved being on board Kendal. I'd been well treated by the crew, I'd had a garrulous and entertaining captain, and I would happily have signed up for another five weeks, something that the captain also said I was crazy to think about. But I wasn't there for nine months at a time like the Filipino seafarers, who, when I asked them to describe their job to me, called it "dollar for homesickness." They had good salaries, but theirs is still an isolating and difficult life in a dangerous and often difficult element.
Kada sam stigla u Singapur, i izvinjavam se što ću ovo reći, nisam htela da se iskrcam sa broda. Jako mi se dopalo na brodu Kendal. Posada se lepo ophodila prema meni, kapetan je bio pričljiv i zabavan, i rado bih se prijavila na još pet nedelja, zbog čega je kapetan opet rekao da sam luda što o tome razmišljam. Ja nisam bila na tom brodu devet meseci zaredom, kao oni filipinski pomorci, koji, kada sam ih pitala da mi opišu svoj posao, odgovoriše: „Dolar za nostalgiju.“ Imaju dobre plate, ali život im je i dalje izolovan i težak i često ispraćen opasnostima.
But when I get to this part, I'm in two minds, because I want to salute those seafarers who bring us 90 percent of everything and get very little thanks or recognition for it. I want to salute the 100,000 ships that are at sea that are doing that work, coming in and out every day, bringing us what we need. But I also want to see shipping, and us, the general public, who know so little about it, to have a bit more scrutiny, to be a bit more transparent, to have 90 percent transparency. Because I think we could all benefit from doing something very simple, which is learning to see the sea.
Kada sam vam sve ovo ispričala, ne mogu da odlučim, jer želim da salutiram pomorcima koji nam donose 90% sve robe i za to dobijaju vrlo malo hvale i priznanja. Htela bih da salutiram i stotini hiljada brodova koji su na moru, koji obavljaju taj posao, dolazeći i odlazeći svakog dana, donoseći nam sve što nam je potrebno. Htela bih i da brodski transport i mi, opšta populacija koja tako malo zna o njemu, da se malo zapitamo, da budemo malo otvoreniji, bar do 90%. Smatram da svi možemo imati koristi ako budemo radili nešto vrlo jednostavno, a to je da naučimo da vidimo more.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)