Black Friday is Causing Toxic Traffic Jams at US Ports and Warehouses (theverge.com) 78
As millions of Americans rush to take advantage of Black Friday deals this weekend, the shopping spree will add to a pollution crisis unfolding at America's ports . For months, broken supply chains have saddled port-side neighborhoods with more pollution than they normally endure. The holiday season will make things even worse. From a report: The disaster is unfolding in spectacular fashion in Southern California, home to the busiest port complex in the western hemisphere (which includes the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach). Here, cargo ships have piled up offshore as the pandemic wreaks havoc on global supply chains. The traffic jam extends to inland distribution hubs that attract trucks, trains, and planes shuttling goods from warehouses to consumers' doorsteps.
That all has consequences for people's health. "We need these things off these ships, I understand that," says Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician and national spokesperson for the American Lung Association. "But it's going to hurt the people around the [areas] these goods come through." There are a lot of factors that wrecked global supply chains, but in short, there was a mismatch in supply and demand. The pandemic shuttered factories. Meanwhile, people started shopping more for home improvement projects and new hobbies they picked up during pandemic-induced lockdowns. In the US, the container ships ferrying those goods from Asia started piling up at ports. During the first three quarters of this year, the movement of containers in and out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach was nearly 30 percent higher than during the same time period in 2019. By November, container ships were parking outside the Port of Los Angeles for an average of 17 days -- more than twice as long as they were towards the start of the year. That has literally led to tons more air pollution in the region because the ships run their auxiliary engines while idling offshore.
That all has consequences for people's health. "We need these things off these ships, I understand that," says Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician and national spokesperson for the American Lung Association. "But it's going to hurt the people around the [areas] these goods come through." There are a lot of factors that wrecked global supply chains, but in short, there was a mismatch in supply and demand. The pandemic shuttered factories. Meanwhile, people started shopping more for home improvement projects and new hobbies they picked up during pandemic-induced lockdowns. In the US, the container ships ferrying those goods from Asia started piling up at ports. During the first three quarters of this year, the movement of containers in and out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach was nearly 30 percent higher than during the same time period in 2019. By November, container ships were parking outside the Port of Los Angeles for an average of 17 days -- more than twice as long as they were towards the start of the year. That has literally led to tons more air pollution in the region because the ships run their auxiliary engines while idling offshore.
Consumerism bad for the environment (Score:5, Funny)
News at 11!
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You jest, but port traffic is incredible. During the height of the pandemic, port traffic was up over 25% compared to the year before. Lots of people just bought more stuff and shipping was designed for much smaller growth (a delicate balance of schedules and everything, and the pandemic upset that when the US decided to go on a buying spree).
Couple that with lockdowns and well, the port backup is understandable Unfortunately things are so intertwined that this ripples the entire shipping system like a pos
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Black Friday is tomorrow, there are ships that have spent weeks waiting to unload their cargo for the past few months - how is Black Friday (which hasn't happened yet) responsible for "toxic traffic jams at US ports and warehouses"?
Well... (Score:3)
This rather buggers up the whole principle of needing a continuously expanding economy. It's obvious the infrastructure isn't there to handle the economy as it stands, if it's possible to disable everything so easily. As I understand it, part of the problem is that a lot of goods are trucked long-distance. That's not an efficient method. Better to transfer by train or by smaller cargo ship to a relatively close distribution point and then truck short distances. Regardless, Covid has impacted the number of drivers available.
Another part of the problem is loading the trains. This isn't automagic (yet), so a lack of people to do the loading and unloading has caused serious problems. However, I don't quite know why this part can't be automated. It would seem one of the simpler problems, since train tracks don't move a whole lot.
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
People want a growing economy.
A growing economy can mean better quality rather than more quantity. Modern TVs use far less material than 30 years ago. A modern cellphone replaces not only a bulkier cellphone but GPS and mapping devices as well. Cars are better today while becoming lighter and more fuel-efficient. E-books and websites use way fewer resources than printed material.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if we use less materials for new devices, it seems like people have more and more stuff. I was born in the 80s, and it wasn't uncommon for there to just be a single TV in the house. Now just about everybody I know has multiple TVs, even if there's just 2 people living in the house. There might have been one computer for the whole family, for the families that owned them, but now we have a situation where every member of the family has 2 or 3 devices (laptop, phone, tablet, etc).
It's easy to compare the new cell phones to the old cell phones and say we are making progress because they use much less material. But when you go back a few years before that, when nobody owned a cell phone, you'll see how much more stuff we consume as a society.
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A growing economy can mean better quality rather than more quantity.
It can, but it won't. The trend has very much gone the other way very consistently for 30 years. You see the economy is a measure of production and consumption. At no point does it concern itself with quality directly. Indirectly it uses models of supply and demand showing consumers favour purchasing cheap shit and companies maximise both the reachable market as well as their own profits by manufacturing cheap shit. Both of these contribute to a good economy.
All of what you mentioned subsequently in your po
Standard of Living (Score:3)
Standard of living doesn't require more money to improve. It just means improving the quality of living. If having a new cooler car or other such tripe is your definition of improved standard of living, you are already fucked up. Granted, if you live in a slum in India, and you manage to get enough money to move into an actual nice house and get food every day, then that is a legit improved standard of living. But being able to buy a new TV on Black Friday is horse shit in that scheme of things.
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True. But on the flip side, most home appliances last half as long or less.
My dishwasher is now 25 years old- it's replacement is expected to last 10 years at most.
Same thing for my fridge and washer dryer.
My "Magic Chef" Home AC unit was installed in1987- the repairmen tell me the replacement will last 8-12 years. One of the capacitors went on the compressor. It was 21 years old. The repairman said the replacement wouldn't last 5 years. It lasted 2 years. That creates a lot of waste.
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One of the capacitors went on the compressor. It was 21 years old. The repairman said the replacement wouldn't last 5 years. It lasted 2 years. That creates a lot of waste.
Exactly how big is this capacitor that it creates "a lot of waste"?
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The vast majority of appliances simply get junked when something goes wrong with them. HVAC is kind of an exception as the replacement cost is high enough that people will still choose to repair, but even then most will replace once the system has hit its engineered lifespan of ~10 years or so.
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The capacitor was about 2 cubic inches.
Per the "Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS)", there are 100,000,000 residential hvac systems.
So at 5 years per failure, that's over 500 cubic meters of waste per year. At 2 years per failure, it's over 1500 cubic meters of waste per year. A blown capacitor isn't recycled. It goes straight into the landfill. That's a lot of wasted aluminum and tantalum.
The main difference is simply using slightly more material to make a much more durable product. But giv
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People want a growing economy. If it weren't getting larger it implies that no additional wealth is being generated or worse that it's actually decreasing which means standards of living won't improve.
As long as world population continues to grow, a stagnant economy is a shrinking economy. If and when world population finally levels off in the coming decades, we can consider attempting a steady state economy. Until then, it would make things worse for everyone.
We're not putting up with all the downsides of capitalism only to have our standards of living get worse. We expect something out of this deal.
Self induced problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I've come to believe that this is a self-inflicted problem. We're basically doing this to ourselves, and using it as an excuse to promote a specific blend of political change.
I asked about this on Slashdot, and was told that the longshoremen can't come to work because of Covid, and that doing so would be counterproductive because then they'd contract Covid and die.
This makes no sense, because the chance of dying in that age group is very low, not to mention the chance of contracting Covid in that job is low
Re: Self induced problem (Score:1)
The president that created operation Warp Speed is not the president in charge of this slow moving economic disaster. The current president believes all of these shortages and higher prices for food and gas is a good thing because he thinks it will slow demand for food and gas (which is true when we all starve and freeze to death)
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It's the companies, not the workers, that need to get their shit together. Have you read or talked to a truck driver? Both my uncles were in trucking. One had his own business with a large semi and also a Ford 350. Him and his wife droves these trucks for 30 years and provided a really nice lifestyle for themselves.
I work in retail and talk with our truckers daily. They all work 12-14 hour days and have for decades.
The stuff I read is even worst then what I hear from people that at least work for decent com
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I was, and still is, against the rampant consumerism plaguing our society. But when you look at the people doing the consuming, it's mostly your average 9-5er who still spends an hour per commute to get to and from his dead-end, soul sucking job.
Some people's only pleasure in life is to spend their hard-earned cash on something, anything, to numb the pain.
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It's the companies, not the workers, that need to get their shit together.
It's not the companies; it's the consumers. I'm GenX - I was a kid in the 70s. With the exception of energy, housing and vehicles, everything cost a lot more back then.
The reason we had one TV was a TV cost the equivalent of $2000or more (in today's money). Today a TV is ten-times less. Ditto fridges and washing machines and a thousand other things.
Heck, even Raiders of the Lost Ark on VHS cost $125 (in today's money).
Tho
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The bigger problem is that everything is made off-shore and has to be brought in. When that wasn't the case the distribution systems had no single choke point and things moved relatively smoothly. If the plan of on-shoring many things works out, much of the current system bottleneck points should clear up, even if just a little.
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The real problem at the ports (especially west coast US) is that they don’t have the level of automation necessary to operate at maximum efficiency. The average container gets unloaded by the port crane and dropped on the ground, moved by a mobile gantry crane to a truck, moved by the truck to a staging area, unloaded by another gantry crane, shuffled around 2-3 times by said gantry crane to allow access to other containers, and eventually loaded onto a long distance truck or a port truck that transf
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More like 2004, Automation will take our jobs.
The New-Panamax ships just are not viable for non-automated unload and logistics.
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The port infrastructure is as you say, a balancing act.
The margins are very thin for most legs of the supply chain, hence not a lot of resources for say adding extra capacity at container ship or intermodal shipping locations to handle the occasional disruption.
This is also where in most progressive countries, the government would either show up with money to fix the issue that represents an exigent threat to the economy, or where a municipality does something similar. (But since we're talking about the U
Western Hemisphere (Score:1)
Remember: the Western Hemisphere runs from Greenwitch UK to about the Bering Strait. Most of Europe, Africa and all of Asia and Oceania is Eastern Hemisphere.
Please don't say Western Hemisphere. It's nonsense.
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It makes it easier to be the busiest place, if you eliminate all other competition.
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> Remember: the Western Hemisphere runs from Greenwitch UK
Any reasonable person would refer to North and South America as the western hemisphere. Let's check...
In geopolitical terms, ***the context in which the term is most often used***, the Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as "North and South America and the surrounding waters. Longitudes 20W and 160E are often considered its boundaries."[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Always with the Ray-Ciss Headlines. . . (Score:1)
Are the jams talking behind each others back? (Score:2)
Or are they annoying everyone with their perfectionism?
So? (Score:2)
"national spokesperson for the American Lung Association. "But it's going to hurt the people around the [areas] these goods come through."
So a boom for lung-doctors, new Porsches for everybody, why do you complain?
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If that is your honest reaction then you have Anti-Social Personality Disorder.
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"If that is your honest reaction then you have Anti-Social Personality Disorder."
Who doesn't, have you met us?
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You have made the egocentric mistake of believing your point of view on all matters is the dominant one.
Why does so much stuff flow to the US? (Score:2)
What is the US shipping to the rest of the world that makes the rest of the world ship all that stuff to the US?
And how long are they going to keep doing it?
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Answers:
Money
As long as we keep printing it.
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Re:Why does so much stuff flow to the US? (Score:4, Informative)
The USA exports lots of stuff really. Cars/car parts, aircraft/parts, oil, and pharmaceuticals are just some of the top ones. Food is a major one too that brings in close to $100 billion.
(believe it or not some years the USA is the top exporter of refined petro products)
Also while I think it's not typically counted as an export in many reports, intellectual properties/cultural exports is a big one too that brings in many billions to the USA from overseas. Think music, books, movies, shows, video games and so on.
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That reserve [currency] status is how we get away with being a debtor nation.
And if you inflate it too rapidly, in comparison to other currencies, it becomes too expensive to hold it or denominate contracts in it for future settlement. So international business start to move to other currencies and eventually cluster around some OTHER currency and you're not "the reserve currency" any more - just the latest giant pile of hyper-inflating paper. This produces an incentive to keep the inflation rate down.
Eve
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believe it or not some years the USA is the top exporter of refined petro products
A technicality. It did so via hydroskimming and a significant portion of the "refined petro products" actually needed to be further refined.
But yes the USA is despite all claims to the contrary still quite a big exporter, just not a net exporter.
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As a manufacturer myself I can tell you that I ship my product worldwide. That said, many of the components come from Asia.
The simple fact is that stuff can be made much cheaper in China than anywhere else (currently). I'll give you a real example. A friend of mine is a retired injection mold designer. He once showed me a cheap plastic limited-edition NASCAR race car. It was the kind of thing that you buy for $10 for your kid when you went to a race. This one was for a particular race team. Another t
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What Black Friday deals? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sales people lie to their customers -- news at 10.
Re: What Black Friday deals? (Score:1)
Ya its been like that for at least a decade ... Way to keep up
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CamelCamelCamel is a great site for checking that on Amazon. You just paste the product URL in and it shows you the price history so you can see if it's really a deal or not.
Most black Friday deals are fake, and the few good ones need you to be there mashing F5 and getting very lucky.
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https://greasyfork.org/en/scri... [greasyfork.org]
not sure if this works any more, though
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Thanks, that looks useful.
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Discounts? Deals? Black Friday is about trampling people, and getting into fist fights over a sale sticker. Actually buying something is completely secondary.
Why? (Score:2)
Others get you on the fine print. For example, I saw an ISP advertise a low monthly rate, but the fine print said they could change the price anytime, with no notice. Likely in the second month. :-/
Great weekend *not* to go shopping...
Logistic constipation (Score:2)
The logjam at ports is of course due to weak logistics. Rail lines could move containers far inland for distribution rather than sending tens of thousands of trucks to the seaports, but because the US is "logistically constipated" by existing infrastructure and NIMBY there is no longer room to build anything on/near the coasts.
Trucks move one container at a time (double trailers pulling a 20' on each are rare and not more efficient) so what's happening is the container analog to old break bulk shipping exce
bitch all you want (Score:3)
...but you then have to decide whether you want quality of life or not.
The simple fact is that you can't have the ease and comfort of Western Civilization without the ugly underbelly of transportation.
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean you can wish it away.
Fix the root cause (Score:2)
Why are trucks even being used for this? All long haul shipping from the ports should be done by rail, and that rail should be electrified. Using trucks is insanity, but insanity is what we are really good at these days.
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Why are trucks even being used for this? All long haul shipping from the ports should be done by rail, and that rail should be electrified.
The ports are surrounded by the cities that grew up around them, which are now some of the most expensive real estate in the world.
Do YOU want to pay to buy a corridor through that and tear out a bunch of sky scrapers to build a new, or expand an existing, railroad?
Don't say the government should do it (and not/under pay). The Fifth Amendment, "takings clause" and all,
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Those cities all have rail lines, and the ports are not surrounded by skyscrapers. Here's a view of the railyards at the port of long beach: https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
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lol. Please draw for us on a map, your proposed rail system originating from the port of Long Beach. Show your selected nationwide destinations and the path the rail will take to get there.
We will wait patiently for your analysis. I won't ask you to show where/how you are tying into the electrical grid. Once your map of the rail is completed, we will do that part for extra credit.
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I don't have to propose it, it's already there: https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
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Why are trucks even being used for this?
Because oil, car, and rubber companies successfully lobbied for highway expansion and rail abandonment. In the public transport space they went so far as to buy up and shut down profitable rail lines [wikipedia.org], actually destroying the train cars so that no one else could use them, because they stood to profit from the sale of more petroleum products, automobiles (and trucks, and buses) and tires. In short, corporatism created this problem.
"The pandemic shuttered factories" (Score:3)
While this statement is true in isolation, they apparently don't want to try explaining how producing less products leads to a bigger backup of containers in the ports...
Better or worse for health?... (Score:2)
than getting into a fistfight over a $200 discount on a TV? Seriously Black Friday shows what is wrong with consumerism. When that Walmart opens in the morning, people show just what worthless animals they can actually be all to get a discount on what is already cheap Chinese shit.
In general, make things near where you sell them (Score:2)
You need to make most things roundabout where you sell them - there is no other real option.
I'm not disputing Adam Smith's logic about the division of labor among cobblers and blacksmiths.
But an entire nation of cobblers and blacksmiths? C'mon!