Build more and more and more
Let’s look at some cruise industry stats (presented by someone who seems to think the cruise industry is an excellent thing):
In 2019, the global cruise industry welcomed 29.7 million passengers, created jobs for 1.8 million people around the world and contributed over $154 billion to the global economy.
And added huge amounts of carbon to the atmosphere. Yay.
Cruising was suspended worldwide in mid-March 2020. July 2020 saw a resumption of sailing in parts of Europe, Asia and the South Pacific with around 200 cruises departing in the second half of the year.
In 2021, the cruise industry bounced back further, welcoming almost 13.9 million passengers worldwide. However, this is still only 46% of the passengers that cruised in 2019.
And we want to keep those carbon-dumping figures up, dammit.
Work on building new cruise ships slowed in 2020 and some ships such as Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas which were due to be completed in 2020 were delayed until 2021.
Fewer shipyard closures in 2021 meant that 24 brand new cruise ships were delivered, compared to just 15 in 2020. However, this is still behind the target of 28, as the builds of four new ships were pushed back into 2022.
More, more, more; we can never have enough.
This is why I see zero reason to think humans are going to be able to do anything about global warming until it burns up everything. We can’t even stop building fucking cruise ships so what are the odds we’re going to do anything more difficult than that?
Your mega cruise ship burns 80 thousand gallons of fuel a day when traveling. I assume it’s significantly less when tied up at the pier, but it ain’t nothing. All of this is pure recreation, and thus optional, and thus when the result is the heat death of the planet, you’d think we could decide we should maybe stop. But no.
Worth letting the planet catch fire? I wouldn’t have thought so.
Saw some in the port in San Diego last week (seems like there was a different one each day). One was called the “Euro Dam”. I assume that’s because it’s large enough to dam up all of Europe.
I see them CONSTANTLY here. There often is a different one each day. There are TWO piers dedicated to them. The grotesque waste is rubbed in our noses.
They’re probably a constant in San Diego as well. (I was there for just a few days.) Absolute monstrosities.
Yep. Busy port cities. I love living in a busy port, but the cruise giants make me feel like becoming a saboteur.
It’s natural selection at work… As the ice melts large icebergs became much rarer and the robust variants of cruise ships became dominant in the absence of their natural predators.
So, as I may have mentioned here two or twelve times, kind-hearted environmentalists have arranged for the last California nuclear power plant to be shut down:
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/californias-last-nuclear-plant-is-poised-to-shut-down-what-happens-next/596970/
That plant generates 18,000 GWh (gigawatt hours) of power a year, which is 10% of CA’s electricity. They’re going to replace it with other carbon-free sources of electricity (wink). Except they haven’t. And, heck, even if they had, why shut it down until they’ve replaced all of the carbon-emitting sources?
And certainly there aren’t carbon-free sources of power just sitting around that will come online only when the nuclear plant is shut down. So essentially 100% of what’s lost from shutting down the nuke plant will be replaced by carbon-emitting sources.
So how many cruise ships is that worth? Well, not an easy question, but we can get a rough answer. There is an electric-powered cruise ship:
https://electrek.co/2022/03/31/worlds-largest-electric-cruise-ship-makes-maiden-voyage-in-china-with-a-whopping-7500-kwh-in-battery-power/
It has a 7,500 kWh of battery capacity which lets it go on a small 60 mile cruise.
So 18,000 GWh / 7,500 kWh = 18,000 GWh / 0.007500 GWh = 2,400,000.
So 2.4 million of those little cruises. Normal cruise ships can travel about 552 miles a day, so our total cruise ship days would be 2,400,000 x (60 / 552) = 260,870 cruise ship days. Divide that by 365, and that’s 715 cruise ships operating year round with no breaks.
The internet tells me there are about 314 cruise ships operating.
As I said, these are rough calculations. The electric cruise ship carries about half the passengers of an average cruise ship, so if they use twice as much power that would put the numbers close to parity. And maybe electric plants are better at not emitting carbon than cruise ships, so maybe the new emissions from shutting down the nuke plant won’t be quite as bad as the emissions from all the cruise ships.
But they’re in the same ballpark (especially since my calculations assumed the cruise ships were running non-stop).
Fortunately people might be realizing what a big mistake this would be:
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-04-29/california-promised-to-close-its-last-nuclear-plant-now-newsom-is-reconsidering
(Too bad California already shut down 3 other nuclear power plants.)
The Biden administration is also realizing how irresponsible shutting down massive sources of carbon-free energy is:
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/biden-launches-6b-effort-distressed-nuclear-plants-rcna25186
If we’re serious about reducing carbon emissions, we need to reverse the anti-nuclear-power trend. We could be building more efficient plants that create much less nuclear waste, but instead we’re running these old plants, replacing them with nothing, and shutting them down earlier than necessary.
And, yes, by all means let’s do solar and wind and conservation and everything else. It just seems crazy to me to set aside one of biggest tools if this is half the crisis people are saying.
I don’t get the allure of cruises, myself, other than the opportunity to pig out at the trough, drink too much without driving, trying to navigate the overcrowded Lido deck, sick of karaoke, bad comedy, bad stage shows, and overpriced soft drinks that you can just have charged to your card. It’s not the romance of “man and the sea” from your adolescent pirate stories, after all.
To the extent that we *want* ocean going passenger vessels:
https://atomicinsights.com/cover-story-why-did-savannah-fail/
I’ve been on one cruise. I had a great time, even though we never made it to the destination. I suppose my experience could easily have been matched by a stay at a land resort. Easy availability of good quality free¹ food and copious entertainment. I know of people who take cruises and don’t leave the ship; that was my experience, although not deliberately. I imagine something like Club Med is similar. I’d probably prefer Club Med, though. Especially considering the cramped quarters; not as bad as I thought they might be, but small.
¹ Included in the cost, few additional charges, depending where you chose to eat.
“Cruise to the Edge” is the only cruise ship I ever considered but haven’t been able to rustle up the funds in the past. Happening right now actually, not the best lineup I’ve seen but many of the artists I’ve seen before and can’t wait to see again.
https://cruisetotheedge.com/the-bands/
I wouldn’t be leaving the ship either.