As the shipping industry searches for a path through its carbon dilemma, a new study reminds us that the ideal and the available are rarely the same thing. Researchers modeling the Asia-Europe trade corridor found that soybean biodiesel — unglamorous, already aboard, requiring no new engines or ports — outperforms synthetic electrofuels on both cost and emissions reduction until well past 2040. The finding does not settle the question of what shipping's future should look like; it clarifies, with some discomfort, what the present actually offers.