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Comment by darksaints | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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