What’s the big picture on the big ship?
Yes, this newsletter contains memes about the boat that was stuck in the Suez Canal. Yes, it also contains important background on global supply chains.
Hey there, and welcome to the 25th issue of The Supplement, a newsletter that fills in the gaps of your other news intake. This is Sam, one-third of the Supplement team!
Each week, we pick a question submitted by you, our readers. If you’d like to submit a question for a future week — it can seriously be about anything — then email us at thesupplementnewsletter@gmail.com.
We’re cool and colorful over on Insta, check us out there!
This week, we’re tackling this question: What’s the big picture on the big ship? (aka the Suez Canal blockage, aka Boaty McBoatface, aka Ever Given)
TL;DR: On March 23, a massive cargo ship called Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal. The incident cost about $9.6 billion a day in global trade losses and absolutely delighted the internet, becoming the biggest meme since Bernie Sanders’s glorious mittens. Jokes aside, Ever Given’s adventure taught us that with COVID-19 added into the picture, the global production chain is more fragile than ever.
In case the memes, stories, photos and quips passed you by last week, we have you covered with the catch-up on both levels — funny and serious — and why you should care about the big boat that captivated the world.
On March 23, a massive cargo ship called Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal, the main water highway between Europe and Asia that is responsible for guiding about 10 per cent of global trade. We don’t really know for sure why it happened — the ship’s loss of control amid strong winds and sandstorms was likely a big contributing factor.
What we do know is that the ship is approximately the size of the Empire State Building, and that the economic impact cannot go understated. Lloyd's List Intelligence, a global team of industry experts, estimated that each day the ship was stuck cost $9.6 billion, due to the growing congregation of boats piled up behind it (up to 367 at one point).
As could have been predicted, everyone quickly became absolutely obsessed with this incident.
And we got memes galore out of it. Some prime examples:
(Fun fact: the last time the Suez Canal was blocked, a “utopian communist micronation was formed at sea.”)
And, because 2021 is a bingo card, it was actually the moon herself that helped Ever Given on its way on March 29, after six long days of building anticipation. Well, the moon’s influence on water levels in the canal, as well as a “congregation of tugboats and dredgers,” according to TIME.
(In case videos are more your speed, Reuters has a good one.)
Ever Given’s misadventure also started a much wider conversation on how fragile the global economy would have been if the situation was stretched out any further, which I want to draw your attention to after you’re done chuckling. The availability and pricing of coffee, toilet paper and other imported goods could have been impacted. As it is, experts predicted that areas of Europe and Asia could be feeling the effects for months to come.
Deloitte recently published a report on how COVID-19 has highlighted the need to transform traditional supply chain models. Remember when the pandemic started and people were buying in bulk and hoarding toilet paper? This fear is what was created because of supply chains. The unimaginable inflation that northern Indigenous communities face is central to the problem as well.
“A decades-long focus on supply chain optimization to minimize costs, reduce inventories, and drive up asset utilization has removed buffers and flexibility to absorb disruptions ─ and COVID-19 illustrates that many companies are not fully aware of the vulnerability of their supply chain relationships to global shocks,” it reads.
In other words: the shift to quick and cheap methods of production has made things much more precarious in the cases of global pandemics and sticky ship situations.
More local production could help circumvent this problem, and do the environment a lot of good. In BC, for example, COVID-19 has sparked an interesting push to improve the province’s food security.
Here’s someone to follow: Mercedes Stephenson, Ottawa bureau chief with Global News, has been tirelessly covering allegations of sexual misconduct against Canadian Military Gen. Johnathan Vance and the wider culture of toxicity within the organization. To catch up on this issue, start with the beginning of the investigation and the way one of the women behind the allegations tells her story.
Here’s a story to check out: I love a good blockbuster feature, and this piece by Abbott Kahler for The Marshall Project does not disappoint. After the success of her novel Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen spent years trying to prove a man's innocence — even if it almost destroyed her life. Now she’s “absolutely broke” and “seriously ill,” and her next book is “years past deadline.”
