I’ve always thought that living by the sea in Ireland, no matter how polluted our land and water might be, that the air would be as clean as it gets. Not so, it seems. Last week, the United States decided to impose a 230-mile buffer zone around its coastline that will come into effect next year. So what’s causing the problem?

Not illegal immigrants, drug smugglers or erratically-flown aeroplanes, but rather plain, ordinary cargo ships. The diesel burned in maritime engines - bunker fuel - is not subject to the same pollution controls as the stuff you put in your car. It contains 2,000 times more sulphur, for starters.

In 2007, a study by the World Health Organisation estimated that tiny soot particles generated by shipping were responsible for 60,000 deaths worldwide through heart and lung failure.

The particles are small enough to penetrate tissue, enter the blood, and cause inflammations and then disease.

Revised studies by the US show that maritime engine pollution kills 60,000 people annually in that country alone. Denmark estimates that 1,000 people die there every year from the same cause.

Some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world pass the southern coasts of Ireland and Britain so, although we have no studies, our figure would presumably be at least equivalent to the Danish one, but is probably much higher.

Europe at present has no plans to impose a low-emissions buffer zone like the US but, if it did, shipping would have no choice but to clean up its act. The 15 biggest ships supposedly emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760 million cars - a difficult concept to grasp until you see photos of some of their engines.

These can be three storeys high, weigh 2,300 tonnes and deliver more than 100,000 horsepower. Not every ship has an engine this big, of course, but the low grade of fuel used means that the 90,000 cargo vessels plying the seas are causing much more pollution than cars, and the much-cursed aviation industry too.

* Sticking with a watery theme, it’s not often I get excited about either Fine Gael or septic tanks, but proposals by the party’s environment spokesman Phil Hogan to create a new state company to oversee all aspects of water supply, disposal and recycling in Ireland make an awful lot of sense.

Much more investment in Ireland’s water infrastructure is going to be necessary if disgusting incidents of drinking supply contamination are to be avoided in future. Waste from agriculture and urban sewage systems is not being properly dealt with, far from it. Unless modernisation work starts soon, the country will have serious problems meeting the 2015 deadline for EU water framework directives. On current evidence, a lot needs doing.

One of the historic difficulties has always been the amount of craven buck-passing that goes on between central and local government on water management issues. The establishment of one agency to oversee all aspects of water provision would be extremely worthwhile, provided it was given proper resources and powers.

* As Ireland flounders in economic crisis, consider the example of Germany, where the reunification of the country in 1990 flattened the economy and is since estimated to have cost €1.5 trillion.

But one thing the Germans never do is sit around moping into their beer.

Last year, 7.3 per cent of primary energy consumption in Germany came from renewable sources. A new roadmap published by the federal government, which pursues a proactive renewables policy, estimates that Germany will be 33 per cent renewables-dependent by 2020 and that, in the process, it will create between 800,000 and 900,000 new clean-tech jobs.

In Ireland, according to Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI),we drew 2.9 per cent of our energy from renewable sources last year. Could we perhaps be learning something from Germany, not just about coping with crisis but turning it to our advantage?