This paper was written for ECON 310 Natural Resource Economics. It is an example of technical writing on a narrowly-focused subject to meet specific learning objectives—to quantify and analyze the environmental impact and fuel consumption of a particular human activity. The assignment was to develop a fuel economy estimate for a container vessel of a given size and compare the ship’s fuel consumption over a range of operating speeds, with that of truck and train transport. The fuel economy estimates are computed from an empirical formula which is given in the text. One reason this paper is better than many others submitted for this assignment is that the author followed the instructions closely. Although this kind of technical writing often relies on specialized vocabulary and offers limited outlet for personal expression, the author attributes his superior writing ability to his experience writing songs for performance. He performs regularly as a guitarist with Southside of the Tracks (http://www.southsideofthetracksrocks.com/).
