Income inequality and reduced carbon emissions on the high seas

In an earlier blog post I wrote about how income inequality is caused not by greed or injustice, but rather by the fact that knowledge workers are becoming more and more valuable based on their ability to create systems that eliminate the need for middle-class, typically union, jobs. In that post, I cited Fastrak as an example of such a system -- since it eliminated union tolltakers -- and predicted that union workers on BART will soon be replaced by automated trains.

Well, now, Bloomberg reports that the Rolls Royce company is developing unmanned container ships:

In an age of aerial drones and driver-less cars, Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is designing unmanned cargo ships. Rolls-Royce’s Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel’s bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships. ... The company’s schematics show vessels loaded with containers from front to back, without the bridge structure where the crew lives. By replacing the bridge -- along with the other systems that support the crew, such as electricity, air conditioning, water and sewage -- with more cargo, ships can cut costs and boost revenue, Levander said. The ships would be 5 percent lighter before loading cargo and would burn 12 percent to 15 percent less fuel, he said.

The maritime unions, of course, are appalled:

The International Transport Workers’ Federation, the union representing about 600,000 of the world’s more than 1 million seafarers, is opposed. “It cannot and will never replace the eyes, ears and thought processes of professional seafarers,” Dave Heindel, chairman of the ITF’s seafarers’ section in London, said in an e-mailed statement. “The human element is one of the first lines of defense in the event of machinery failure and the kind of unexpected and sudden changes of conditions in which the world’s seas specialize. The dangers posed to the environment by unmanned vessels are too easily imagined.”

So, Google can develop driverless cars that navigate flawlessly through traffic, but we still need the "eyes, ears, and thought processes" of the maritime unions. Right!

The really interesting thing about unmanned ships is that they are being justified by the argument that they will result in less fuel consumption: "The ships would be 5 percent lighter before loading cargo and would burn 12 percent to 15 percent less fuel." In my earlier post on Fastrak, I pointed out that one of the major advantages of RFID technology is that it helps to reduce carbon emissions because drivers do not need to idle their cars through long lines waiting to hand over physical money to a tolltaker.

It will be interesting to hear what Progressives say when it becomes obvious that the development of new technology required to reduce carbon emissions (such as unmanned container ships or Fastrak) directly translates into an increase in income inequality as high-tech entrepreneurs -- members of the 1% -- develop more fuel-efficient systems that eliminate middle-class union jobs. This is the same problem Obama faces with the Keystone pipeline: delaying the pipeline pleases his Green supporters and allows them to continue to make millions through the development of alternative energy projects, but it also costs thousands of well-paying middle class jobs.

The Obama alliance between the unions and the Greens has fault lines built in and will not hold together.