But if you still have to go inland, it's the same problem but worse. Sure places on the coast can get cheaper/less wasteful goods by water but once you have to

But if you still have to go inland, it's the same problem but worse. Sure places on the coast can get cheaper/less wasteful goods by water but once you have to take those goods inland you have the same dilemma. At least with local production you only have to worry about the last X miles rather than those last X miles plus maritime travel. Additionally, local transport doesn't preclude using waterways. There's plenty of viable river shipping lanes in most regions not exposed to the coast but once again the last mile is going to probably be by road. So local production can still happen on the coasts but by making it local you free up whatever percentage of international maritime traffic that could either be used for something else or go unused and save some amount of pollution. --- Side note but if we want to cut down on pollution why isn't there a bigger push to replace diesel propulsion with nuclear propulsion in commercial vessels? Just a quick search and it looks like Maritime shipping accounts for something like 13% of Sulphur emissions, 15% of NOx emissions, and 3% of CO2 emissions. That seems like a pretty big/easy way to cut down on atmospheric and greenhouse gas pollution from a global standpoint.