If you aren’t listening to the Planet Money Podcast you should. Because if you did, you would have listened to last weeks episode, That Lime Green Coat, which discussed how people in the UK not buying expensive designer coats is affecting Cairo bread makers (via the Suez Canal). They interviewed a representative from Maersk Line Shipping discussing that due to the economy, they were not shipping through the Suez Canal, opting to go around the Horn of Africa because the fuel and time cost were less than the canal tolls. And apparently, the cost of piracy as today a US Flag Maersk carrier was hijacked.
This decision to forgo speed for cost savings is a rational decision, insofar as carbon and fuel is priced unduly low. In a world where the externalities of burning an additional 12 days worth of fuel to save canal tolls would be correctly priced, the carrier would chose the canal every time. Only because we have all bought into the fiction that carbon shouldn’t be priced is this allowed. Carbon Pricing would fix this insanity.
I mean, just look at the above map. Madness.