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Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely useless pollution machines. Running on bunker fuel, used as floating towns for people's amusement, polluting more than all of Europe's cars combined.

There is no excuse for them. I believe they should be banned, and any leisure ships should be sail-powered. I bet they would be more fun for the tourists, too.

I understand international shipping is vital, that's why cargo ships get a pass, but cruise ships simply have no place if we actually care about the environment. Sadly, money trumps everything.

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Counterpoint: cruise ships are one of only a handful of ways that poor people can experience a vacation, let alone be able to see a different part of the world. And their pollution is high because of their choice of fuel, not anything inherent to cruising. Specifically, the use of bunker fuel vs other alternatives drives SOx and NOx emissions extremely high, but carbon emissions are actually pretty low. Per person, a weeklong cruise has carbon emissions about equivalent to a 12 hour flight in economy class.

So if you want lower pollution, maybe just target the use of bunker fuel, and force them into low sulfur fuels like the shipping industry has already done. And if carbon emissions are still a problem, ban private jets and first class flights.

How do you force them to do that in international waters? They can register with any country that refuses to adhere to the standards or simply has a corrupt system and doesn't check anything.

Yes, they have relatively low carbon emissions, but NOx/SOx as you said are extremely high. And the Earth's ecosystem doesn't really have individual parts, it's all interconnected. Polluting the oceans leads to major problems on land. Air pollution is also carried everywhere else.

Hence, banning cruise ships in particular is a straightforward way to reduce global emissions without significant side effects.

I am poor. My vacations have been by bus and train, and I like them. I can see various cities and people while going to my destination, and it's cheaper than a cruise. Since it's on land, emissions are strict and it's really hard to break the laws around them.

You're right about the private jet flights, as well. It's really an extra luxury for the people who will soon tell us we have to make sacrifices in order to save the planet. I guess they really need that extra hour when going to ask for public money for their failing enterprises.

I'm not downvoting btw, you have a valid point. I only downvote extremely dumb or offensive comments.

Out of all non-landlocked countries, only two do not belong to, and therefore are not technically regulated by, the International Maritime Organization: Micronesia and Taiwan. So unless they are registering your ships in those countries (most cruise ships use flags of convenience for tax reasons, not regulatory reasons), they are playing by those rules, even while in international waters. And by doing so, the NOx and SOx are cut drastically.

I don't think cruise ships are great. Even if they were fueled by pure renewable or nuclear energy, there are still problems, ranging from invasive species taking trips across the world in bilges, nutrient-concentrations from black water dumps leading to overgrowth zones of marine plants, destroyed coral reefs from massive anchor chains, and garbage pollution that makes its way off of poorly contained balconies. But again, this is a problem of regulation. They are all fixable problems.

I also should mention that I find most arguments about cruise industry labor policies to be extremely hypocritical and elitist. People will complain about how they make their workers work long hours for little pay, but won't lift a finger to change it. Open up our borders, give them an option to work somewhere that has actual labor laws. Hell, when these cruise ships come into US ports, we don't even let the workers off the boat, for fear that they might illegally stay permanently and have a better life with labor laws and living wages inside our borders. We take away all their better options, but then complain that unethical companies take advantage of it?

Basically, I agree that the cruise industry is dirty, unethical, and run by despicable people. But the actual problems they present to the world are also fixable by the world, and cruises don't necessarily need to be banned to do so. I'd prefer they fix their problems, but I still want them around so that the high school dropout machinist with 4 kids can go on regular vacations with his family and realize his dream of visiting 30 countries before he dies.

Seems pretty easy to me: cruise ships aren't allowed to dock on american shores if they don't have a constant audit and log of the fuel they use.

See “magic pipes” on cruise ships: more or less diverting oil contaminated water by the engine away from the tanks where they’re supposed to be kept and back into the sea because emptying these tanks when docked costs a bit or money that the cruise ship operator would rather keep for themselves. These are illegal and strict records are supposed to be kept so they can be audited and detected. Yet these records are falsified and useless.

Then make it illegal for any ship built by that company to dock on american shores until every ship they've ever built can be audited for not having this fuckery. At their expense. There needs to be consequences for people breaking the law.

That’s the beauty of it, magic pipes are easy to undo quickly so they are hard to detect.

The big companies pay pretty much zero in tax as well, "running" their businesses out of places like Bermuda and Liberia. Most passengers are also totally unaware of the rights they sign away when boarding as well - things like onboard doctors being immune from malpractice, no jury trials for lawsuits, the company can use any images and video of you onboard for any purposes at all, and agreeing you can't participate in class action lawsuits against the company.

Why assume it's a 0 sum game or try to regulate how people enjoy their free time?

Isn't it much more effective to simply force ships to have much fewer emissions or offset them?

I've had these debates way too many times. I am not getting into another one.

My stand is, burning dirty oil for people's enjoyment to the detriment of the oceans and the air is [insert bad words].

I said, use sailboats for leisure tourism. Plenty of fun.

At this rate, we'll fuck up the planet enough that governments will take the power in their hands and everyone will be forced to help with the cleanup.

If we don't do something now, out of our own volition, we're all going to end up with much more authoritarian governments and limits on individual freedoms. It's either that or civil wars. No way around it.

I don't know anything about you, but I guarantee you do something for fun that I could point to and say it's 'burning dirty oil for your enjoyment to the detriment of the world and the air'.

Sure, everyone does. Cruise ships are one thing that can be completely removed with great effect for the environment and it will be a minor inconvenience for the people who used to pay for them.

Yes, many will take planes and trains and cars, any of which will still pollute less than cruise ships.

There is no downside to banning them and using sail ships (aside from a potential loss of revenue).

Don't worry. The health crisis will regulate things better than any government. I'd sail for leisure as well because I'm quite crowd-adverse and don't like the idea of a floating hotel, especially after what happened on Diamond Princess. However, you can't really blame elderly people going on a cruise. Also going to Anctarctica is also quite challenging on a small sailboat. I'd like to see solar + nuclear powered comercial ships with tamper proof reactors.

> However, you can't really blame elderly people going on a cruise.

This sentence made me think... how many people are toiling hard under the promise that, when they amass enough wealth and eventually retire, then they'll have time to jump on cruise ships and see the world? Isn't this the tail end of the American dream? No surprise then that there isn't a widespread consensus to kill the cruise shipping industry - as you have people burning the best years of their life chasing a carrot, only for you to propose to take the carrot away.

At the very least, the cruise ship operators should be made to internalize the entire environmental cost of their pollution. The best way to do that would be through taxing bunker fuel, but that may cause mayhem with the entire shipping industry, so I'd initially be fine with just a large and very much unfair tax on cruise operators. Not enough to take away the carrot, but enough to make it appropriately expensive, relative to the environmental costs. Now is probably the best time for that - the companies are devastated by COVID and won't have money to bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby against such measures.

I agree about the elderly, not about the bans. It's their decision, let them enjoy it. The market could change anyway, especially after the health crisis. Cruise ships scrapped? Good riddance.

It's quite hard to tax them. They sail under Panama flags in international waters and are registered in some country most people haven't heard of. They can only be taxed while at anchor in a port under some jurisdiction. They'll happily refuel in Jamaica, Cuba or Haiti if fuel is taxed in the US. We've seen that in Europe with truckers and fuel taxes in some jurisdictions.

> no downside

Sailing ships have unreliable schedules, for one.

Why single out ships? Maybe we could just tax emissions such that the activity does not matter.

It's more efficient to remove the cause of emissions than to tax it and try to compensate for it. All carbon emissions should be taxed, but some things should just not be allowed.

Tax the purchase of bunker fuel for its emissions content. Cruise ships aren't going to drill for oil in international waters.

Is burning bunker fuel at sea really a big problem? My understanding is that the impurities (sulphur mostly) in bunker fuel are bad for people to breathe and create smog, so they shouldn't be burned around population centres. The main greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, and you produce roughly the same amount of that per watt of power no matter what hydrocarbon you burn.

Hydrocarbons are molecules that are various combinations of H and C atoms. The H burns to H2O, the C to CO2. A hydrocarbon with a greater quantity of H is going to emit less CO2 when burned.

Sure, but H weighs 1/12 as much as C. Most of the fuel mass goes to CO2 no matter what you do: whether you slap on 1.5 H atoms or 3 for each C, it makes up a small part of the molecular weight.

Of course, it could be that the C-H bonds contribute much more to the energy released by burning the fuel than the C-C. But this doesn't seem to be case. Here's a paper in favour of switching to lighter fuels for ships: it argues that the total supply chain CO2 contribution would be higher (it takes energy to refine those fuels), but only by 1%.

I think that "bunker fuel is really bad and ships switching to lighter cleaner fuels is important for the environment" is a seductively easy but bad target for carbon reduction. There are way better places to spend our efforts.

[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3155/1047-3289.58.4.5...

> There are way better places to spend our efforts.

The easiest, most economically efficient, most productive way to do it is to tax the C content of fuels. Use the monies raised to subsidize green energy.

Banning is an indiscriminate club that does a lot of collateral damage.

But that's exactly what wouldn't be suitable for reducing pollution from bunker fuel. Shippers would pay the same taxes as for burning kerosene or diesel, plus or minus a few percent, but they'd go with the cheaper option and cause huge sulphur pollution in port cities.

The regulations we have now (no high-sulphur fuels in cities, no leaded gasoline...) are better than taxing only CO2 emissions, even if they're not perfect.

So do the obvious - tax the sulfur content of the fuels, too.

The problem with banning is its inflexibility. For example, let's say you have a bunker-fueled emergency generator for a hospital that you use only when the power goes out. The pollution it emits is negligible. But by banning bunker fuel, you'll have to replace the emergency generator, at considerable expense and environmental cost.

With taxes instead, you:

1. bunker fuel will only be used when there's high value for it, and you won't have to add a plethora of exemptions into the regulation

2. have a revenue center for the government instead of a cost center - revenue that can be used to subsidize green initiatives

Because otherwise it's just "we need to do something about that" handwaving and it gets nowhere. So, single out cruise ships - a straightforward way to reduce global pollution by a good degree with minimal effects on the individual.

The problem with ships is that once they enter international waters they can do whatever they want.

Which is exactly what they do, burn bunker fuel outside territorial waters and switch to cleaner fuel when they approach a country (because they are forced to).

There is simply no enforcement outside territorial waters, and if anyone tried to, they'd be immediately condemned by everyone else.

Why don't we ban container ships?

Is it possible that you are a member of a group of individuals that do not enjoy nor participate in cruises and therefore do not give anything up by calling for their ban? You can feel good about it without personally sacrificing anything and instead forcing others to make that sacrifice.

How would you feel if it were the inverse and others were calling for a ban on an activity you enjoy?

I might enjoy eating babies, that doesn’t make someone claiming this practice should be banned on ethical grounds wrong.

In many countries people eat young lamb or veal, some consider it acceptable and others don't.

It is very easy to call for a ban on something that you personally do not enjoy because you lose nothing. In fact a majority of the world's population likely does not enjoy cruising, just as a different majority does not enjoy snow sports, water sports, car racing, motorcycles, horse racing, skydiving, rugby, rock climbing, etc..

There is some form of ethical or safety concerns for each of those but the world would be a very boring place if we banned them all.

The newer ones run on LNG (which is better but still not remotely good).

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