Cruise ships = 0.2% of global emissions.
Stopping both will have a negligible effect on global carbon, probably near 0 since more people will drive as a result.
* https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html
* https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-shi...
> The results [of the study] show that the luxury cruise brands owned by Carnival Corporation & PLC emitted in 2017 in European seas alone 10 times more disease-causing sulphur dioxide than all of Europe’s 260+ million passenger vehicles. Spain, Italy, Greece, France and Norway are the most exposed countries to cruise ship air pollution in Europe.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one-corpor...
> Ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) is a standard for defining diesel fuel with substantially lowered sulfur contents. As of 2016, almost all of the petroleum-based diesel fuel available in the UK, mainland Europe, and North America is of a ULSD type.
Well the thing is that you don't.
Even if the airline industry is decimated, you would only see a fraction of that potential value go down.
In essence you're talking a fraction of 2% of all emissions.
That doesn't even register as noise in the overall trend.
And more importantly, you are doing absolutely nothing to fix the problem. You're passively watching while a temporary crisis affected an industry that has a potential contribution to the problem that is at best around 2%.
That seems to assume that people are still doing the same amount of travel, just not by air; but I don't think that's true.
There's a whole economy before, during, and after. People taking trips on airplanes are often riding taxis and pumping CO2 into the air, buying up loads of goods during their trip that needs to be processed and manufactured (clothes, knick knacks, excess food), and so on. Countries and regions with economies dependent on tourism are taking huge hits to their GDP. That'll likely be reflected in lower emissions.
People would do exactly this locally as a substitute for travel. It might be a boon for a local economy, but doesn't help with carbon and other types of emissions.
It's time to stop hiding behind meaningless numbers and face what's really happening.
> probably near 0 since more people will drive as a result.
Good luck driving from NY to Paris, or from Berlin to Barcelona for the weekend. People lived just fine when they didn't go to the other side of the world every few months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207886-it-turns-out-pl...
https://www.smartgreenpost.com/2019/06/06/smog-in-europe-cru...
https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-gia...
(Vacations aren't climate friendly in general, but when you spread the emissions equally per passenger, it's remarkably efficient)
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-co2-sea...
In it they say:
> For every metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the air, three square meters of Arctic sea ice disappear.
[...]
> To put that in further perspective, Notz said, it means that driving about 2,500 miles in the average American car results in another three square meters of melted ice. A round-trip plane ride from New York to London costs another three square meters or so of Arctic sea ice.
If a single trip between the US and UK can melt that much ice per passenger, the airlines must be spewing a tremendous amount of CO2 into the air. I would think short flights would be even worse. I have a really hard time believing the airlines trade group's 2% figure.
So you’d rather go with your gut and an incredibly vague (square feet of ice / passenger) metric than a straightforward %?
And what does square feet of ice even mean? Last I checked that’s meaningless and a volume of ice should be measured.
> Because climate-model simulations of the sea-ice loss differ substantially, we used a robust linear relationship between monthly-mean September sea-ice area and cumulative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to infer the future evolution of Arctic summer sea ice directly from the observational record.
Air travel doesn’t exist in isolation, less air travel _because_ less people are travelling means you would expect to see a reduction in car use too.
I can't find any evidence that EESI has an industry bias.