Watch ‘Black Trail’ – New Documentary Film Nails the IMO on Carbon Emissions

The new documentary film Black Trail offers a look into the environmental impacts of the shipping industry, a sector which the film’s producers claim “is all but untouchable as it receives eye-watering subsidies and stashes its profits in tax havens, all the while polluting with impunity.”

Many environmental documentaries about shipping have been produced over the past few decades, but this one stands out because they where able to secure interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.  

Interviews include Panos Laskaridis, Former President of The European Community of Shipowners, Dimitrios Fafalios, Chairman of Intercargo, Bud Darr, Former Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) executive and current Executive Vice President of Maritime Policy and Government Affairs at MSC Group, and Ioannis Plakiotakis, the Greek Minister Of Shipping, among others. 

When interviews were denied, as was the case with Kitack Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the filmmakers drove to houses and knocked on doors. 

The film’s producers write in the video description:

“The cross-border team focuses on how the shipping industry has “captured” the International Maritime Organization, the UN agency that has, since 1948, been the only body charged with regulating the emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants produced by ships.

“Although the shipping industry insists that it carries 90 percent of global freight yet is responsible for less than three percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the investigation exposes a darker — and deadlier — reality.

“It shows how the sector has dodged the climate debate as it continues to burn the dirtiest of all transport fuels. Ship emissions are responsible for more than 50,000 deaths a year in Europe as particles like black carbon drive up cancer rates in Mediterranean port cities.

“Meanwhile, the same emissions are contributing to climate change as they speed up the melting of Arctic icecaps.”

The film is just the latest attack that pins the majority of blame on the IMO. The first came from Nishan Degnarain, former Chair of the World Economic Forum’s, who wrote a series of highly damming articles about the organization on Forbes.

You can watch the documentary below:

Black Trail from BlackTrail film on Vimeo.

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