Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" The days of languorous shore leave are long gone. Overnight stays are unheard of and sailor towns a distant memory. In better ports, seafarers head for a seamen's mission. "
Rose George
Long
Mission
Head
Related Quotes:
" There is a scene in Richard Attenborough's biopic where Gandhi argues with his wife because she refuses to clean their latrine. She says it is the work of untouchables; he tells her there is no such thing. Gandhi's tactics of encouraging brotherly love across caste boundaries and urging Indians to clean their own latrines had failed miserably. "
Rose George
Own
Wife
Work
" I find Maersk fascinating. It is the Coca-Cola of freight with none of the fame. Its parent company, A. P. Moller-Maersk, is Denmark's largest company, its sales equal to 20 percent of Denmark's GDP; its ships use more oil than the entire nation. "
Rose George
Parent
Sales
Company
" Along with all the other stunning statistics China can provide, it can also claim to be the world leader in making energy from human excrement. Biogas, as this energy is known, can be produced from the fermentation of any organic material, from wood to vegetables to human excreta. "
Rose George
Statistics
World
Wood
" I find Suez astonishing for the first hour. It is a ditch in a desert, but a stunning one. The sensation of being hemmed in by huge ships, moving at a stately pace through a man-made waterway, is extraordinary. "
Rose George
Desert
Moving
Find
" Sewage works that serve big cities run into trouble when the cities grow up around them. "
Rose George
Run
Big
Trouble
" In 2000, twice as much water was used throughout the world as in 1960. By 2050, half of the planet's projected 8.9 billion people will live in countries that are chronically short of water. "
Rose George
Live
World
Water
" Before containers, transport costs ate up 25 percent of the value of whatever was being shipped. "
Rose George
Value
Transport
Up
" All that is known for sure is that endometriosis is endemic and that it cannot be cured. Management is the best hope. This makes for treatments that are, if I am being polite, based on trial and error. If I am feeling less generous, they are shots in the dark. "
Rose George
I Am
Hope
Dark
" In practice, the ocean is the world's wildest place because of both its fearsome natural danger and how easy it is out there to slip from the boundaries of law and civilization that seem so firm ashore. "
Rose George
Place
World
Practice
" Who cares about the men who steered your breakfast cereal through winter storms? How ironic that the more ships have grown in size and consequence, the less space they take up in our imagination. "
Rose George
Men
Space
Size
" 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. "
Rose George
Three
Aviation
Because
" Research into endometriosis is as scanty as funding. "
Rose George
Scanty
Funding
Research
" Ships are obliged to take on harbor or river pilots - who provide specialized local navigation - when they approach a port, but in the canal, a Suez crew is also obligatory. The crew members are there in case the ship needs to be moored during the canal transit, but this rarely happens. "
Rose George
Harbor
Crew
Take
" We see the sea as this place of leisure and this place, you know, a blue patch on the map to fly over because we all go by plane these days, mostly. And we don't really see it as a place of industry anymore. "
Rose George
You
Blue
Sea
" 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. "
Rose George
Sound
Water
Right
" Shipping is so cheap that it makes more financial sense for Scottish cod to be sent 10,000 miles to China to be filleted, then sent back to Scottish shops and restaurants, than to pay Scottish filleters. "
Rose George
Financial
China
Back
" The average human being spends three years of life going to the toilet, though the average human being with no physical toilet to go to probably does his or her best to spend less. It is a human behavior that is as revealing as any other about human nature, but only if it can be released from the social straitjacket of nicety. "
Rose George
Three
Nature
Life
" Ninety percent of what we wear, we eat, we consume is carried by ships... Container ships carry a vast amount of stuff. "
Rose George
Eat
Percent
Wear
" Rules governing defecation, hygiene, and pollution exist in every culture at every period in history. It may in fact be the foundation of civilization: What is toilet training if not the first attempt to turn a child into an acceptable member of society? "
Rose George
History
Culture
Child
" Usually, there is no equivalent of air traffic control at sea. Some busy areas operate 'traffic separation schemes,' but mostly, ships are treated like cars on roads where there are rules and codes of behavior, and successful, accident-free outcomes depend on everyone respecting them. As on roads, this doesn't always work. "
Rose George
Sea
Rules
Roads
" Sending a container from Shanghai to Le Havre emits fewer greenhouse gases than the truck that takes the container on to Lyon. "
Rose George
Than
Shanghai
Greenhouse Gases
" Some countries have more water than others - some can afford to use clean water to flush their poop away, and some can't. "
Rose George
Clean
Water
Others
" Everything in a modern container port is enormous, overwhelming, crushing. "
Rose George
Modern
Port
Container
" You've probably been asked to care about things like HIV/AIDS or T.B. or measles, but diarrhea kills more children than all those three things put together. It's a very potent weapon of mass destruction. "
Rose George
Three
Together
You
" As for restaurants and fast-food places who tip tons of oil down their drains, they are routinely encouraged to use fat traps, but enforcement is minimal. It costs money to cart away fat (although now that fat is being turned into energy, it can make money). "
Rose George
Energy
Fat
Oil
" Endometriosis is notoriously difficult to diagnose because the symptoms are perverse. A woman with mild endometriosis can be in an agony for days every month (or every day for every month); women with the severe kind can have hardly any pain at all, like me. "
Rose George
Women
Pain
Me
" Of all the peoples of the world, the Chinese are probably the most at home with their excrement. They know its value. For 4,000 years they have used raw human feces to fertilize fields. "
Rose George
Years
Home
Human
" Rotavirus does not cause all diarrhea, but it causes a lot of it. Instead of a single vaccine dose, however, harried nurses may have to give several, as diarrhoea makes it difficult for a child to retain anything. "
Rose George
Child
Single
Anything
" Because sanitation has so many effects across all aspects of development - it affects education, it affects health, it affects maternal mortality and infant mortality, it affects labor - it's all these things, so it becomes a political football. Nobody has full responsibility. "
Rose George
Health
Education
Political
" In the early 19th century, they tried selling soap as healthy. No one bought it. They tried selling it as sexy, and everyone bought it. "
Rose George
Selling
Sexy
Early