On a bright September day on the harbor in Copenhagen, several hundred people gathered to welcome the official arrival of Laura Maersk. She was a hulking containership, towering a hundred feet above the crowd, and the most visible evidence to date of an effort by the global shipping industry to mitigate its role in the planet’s warming. By switching to green methanol, this single ship will produce 100 fewer tons of greenhouse gas per day, an amount equivalent to the emissions of 8,000 cars. The effect of global shipping on the climate is hard to overstate. Cargo shipping is responsible for nearly 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — producing roughly as much carbon each year as the aviation industry does.

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Persons: Laura Maersk, Laura Locations: Copenhagen, Danish