When a gargantuan container ship the size of 4 football fields gets blown sideways by a desert wind to get wedged in the narrow Suez canal, it not only disrupts 15% of the economy worldwide due to the jamming of waterways in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans but also imparts one key lesson for all of humanity – May not human greed be Ever Given.
Greed never pays
Progressive technology has enabled man to build ships each more massive than the previous. Back in the 2000s, a container ship carried about 5000 containers. Today, about 21 years later a single container ship the size of Ever Given can carry between 15,000 to 20,000 containers.
Economists will call it maximizing the Economies of Scale. In layman’s terms, it often translates to “greed”.
It is this insatiable desire to do more, achieve more, that has been our undoing. Yes, we somehow wriggle out of the problem each time. Some may even argue that each problem is an opportunity for mankind to invent something as a solution. However, ultimately it is nature who is facing the wrath of our actions. And reply she will
Close to 10-15% of all the world’s trade happens via the Suez canal. That disrupted trade will now have a spiralling effect on other areas of the world economy like fuel prices and food prices.
One of the stranded ships even has about 1,30,000 livestock being moved from Romania to another country. These poultry birds will now face death due to food and water running out.
