That's an excellent article, and I can't for sure say if I was surprised that cruise ships emit twice as much carbon as flying. However, there is something that compounds this even further: flying...
That's an excellent article, and I can't for sure say if I was surprised that cruise ships emit twice as much carbon as flying. However, there is something that compounds this even further: flying is often a necessity, and just as instrumental to transport as trains, cars or coaches. And yet, as the article mentions, "flight-shaming" is a thing, whilst cruise ships are free to run on sooty, inferior oil, and face little to no pressure to modernise.
Certainly no businessman is taking cruise ships to their next meeting, nor would I take cruise ships to visit family abroad. Cruise ships are, by all means, a dispensable luxury, and that reflects on the industry's commitments in past years.
Modern cruise ships dwarf the Titanic in terms of size and weight and constantly pack in more and more features into their ships, ranging from karting tracks to full-on coasters, all as part of an arms race that completely disregards efficiency.
And frankly, albeit this is a personal opinion, these are all things you could do inland, with a much greater level of comfort. Certainly the gimmick of doing it all on sea should not be a deciding factor, but alas, it is. Most importantly, it does not follow the same line of reasoning as other "premium" methods of travel, like Rovos Rail, or first class flying, which focus on respectable improvements to the travel experience, but without going massively out of their way to turn the trip into a seaside carnival.
We haven't been building increasingly larger trains to accommodate ridiculously large on-board amenities, and planes like the 747 and the A380 are falling out of favour precisely because smaller planes work just as well without compromising first class experiences too much, but cruise ships the size of a village get a pass for some reason.
I don't think one can really compare cruise ships to flying. Other than the fact that they both eventually take you places, the parallels end there. Beyond just moving people from A to B, cruise...
I don't think one can really compare cruise ships to flying. Other than the fact that they both eventually take you places, the parallels end there. Beyond just moving people from A to B, cruise ships have to support an entire hotel load in addition to propulsion. Instead of being confined to 3 sqft of space for your entire flight, a cruise ship gives you your own personal space (with your own bed, bathroom, shower and relaxing space) in addition to communal entertainment, retail and dining spaces. Instead of a passenger/crew ratio of 50:1 on a plane, a cruise has a ratio of 2 or 3:1. And let's not even think of trying to compare cruise ship meals to airline food.
I'll admit bias here, I like cruises. I think they're a nice way to visit a bunch of places in a relatively short period of time. As long as you take some time to get out of the touristy port areas (at least in places where it is safe to do so), you can get a taste of where you might want to to take a longer trip. My wife and I returned to Aruba for a week for our honeymoon after discovering it during a cruise stop. But I get that it's not for everyone.
I also don't think that it's fair to say that cruise ships don't modernize. They've made significant strides towards the reduction of emissions over the years. It's obviously still not where it needs to be, but again, you have to be realistic about emissions by considering the services being offered to passengers (basically a floating city instead of a flying tin can).
I'm not trying to convince you to like cruises. But flying and cruising are very, very different and don't deserve comparison. Flying is purely about getting to the destination as quickly and economically as possible, and cruising is very much about the journey (since the final destination is often where you started).
That's a very good point, and I agree to an extent. I've had friends go on cruises to excellent, exquisite locations and they most certainly enjoyed it, and there was no other way to achieve that....
That's a very good point, and I agree to an extent. I've had friends go on cruises to excellent, exquisite locations and they most certainly enjoyed it, and there was no other way to achieve that. However, my main gripe is with how cruise ships got larger and larger for increasingly diminishing benefits, and these often outweigh the gains in efficiency.
For example, having a casino inside a cruise ship feels sensible, but when you move towards things like waterparks, or 12 different restaurants, it starts to feel like there should be a limit. These require an exponentially higher amount of resources, and the industry seems to gravitate towards these larger cruise ships.
As for modernisation, yes, I agree, there was modernisation and I don't think I phrased it too well, but ultimately, trains went through blistering innovation in the last years, without sacrificing comfort (admittedly in different conditions), and in the meantime, cruise ships can still cruise with dirtier, heavier oil, and I feel like the switch to alternate fuels (which are less energy dense) like LNG is not possible if size keeps increasing.
I don't want to get rid of all cruises, but the industry should definitely stop trying to create floating cities, and instead, focus on delivering excellent experiences without getting stuck in an unending arms race.
The Icon, which is the ship featured in the article, does actually run in LNG. There will eventually hit a point where these ships just can't be any larger. But with the increased size also comes...
The Icon, which is the ship featured in the article, does actually run in LNG. There will eventually hit a point where these ships just can't be any larger. But with the increased size also comes an increased number of passengers who can be served as well, which usually requires more amenities to avoid crowding.
While I don't know how much of a difference it will make, as you noted, they're essentially floating cities. It's a bit dishonest to compare them to just a flight and 4-star hotel, because most...
While I don't know how much of a difference it will make, as you noted, they're essentially floating cities. It's a bit dishonest to compare them to just a flight and 4-star hotel, because most people will do things outside of the hotel. Perhaps an all-inclusive resort like a Club Med would be a better comparison. I have no idea how that would change the calculus, though.
I agree, cruise ships seem like a dispensable luxury. They're an extra environmental and social burden in ways that air travel doesn't represent (at least if you want to keep a globalized society)...
I agree, cruise ships seem like a dispensable luxury. They're an extra environmental and social burden in ways that air travel doesn't represent (at least if you want to keep a globalized society) and can't be mirrored by the depth of travel that tour buses provide. I think cruise ships embody and engender, more than any other form of tourism-transport, some unhealthy attitudes even if it seems easier for a passenger to dip their toes into visiting a bunch of new places.
Not all, but a lot of tourists get tricked into thinking that the experience that exists when a cruise ship makes port is more or less the norm for that locale. It's not, and in some cases this hyper-concentrated tourism is creating unhealthy social and economic dependencies for the communities attempting to profit from that tourism (crime and corruption are said to be more concentrated as a result, competition for jobs in high-unemployed areas keeps wages depressed). These countries and cities and ports can become pressured to keep accepting what amounts to the soft power economic persuasion that is parking a money-dispensing skyscraper off-shore and demanding a good time, even at their own expense.
In some cases, cruise ships don't even go anywhere (in the cases of the cruise ships that run a circular route, or just island-hop or castle-hop). They provide similar services to that hotels, malls, and entertainment venues in a city, but concentrate the clientele in a single area. When they offload those passengers on exotic ports, they warp the reality of the port for the few hours passengers are allowed on shore and pivot a lot of the services industry to cater to an influx of tourists in one highly concentrated area. It's industrial scale livestock farming versus free range and low-impact alternatives. Outside of when cruise ship tourists are there, the port and local town have a different vibe even when hosting tourists from other places.
Compare that to travelers descending on a city and distributing their money across a wider swath of entertainment venues, shopping districts, restaurants, rental companies, and services. Places that already exist as part of a city's economic infrastructure and depend on appealing to both locals and tourists. I think the vibe is so substantially different that it's worth preserving that local feel even without factoring in the environmental benefits of just making do with what we already have on land.
I don't think I agree with you that cruise ships don't have the same burdens that other forms of travel have - air travel in particular. Airports are definately hyper-local distortions of the...
I don't think I agree with you that cruise ships don't have the same burdens that other forms of travel have - air travel in particular. Airports are definately hyper-local distortions of the economy and have a huge effect on the way the communities around them are built. I would agree with you that cruises are a dispensable luxury, but if you're making that arguement then the next logical step is that almost everything related to vacationing is as well.
I do like your argument about the concentration of wealth, but the reason why cruise lines are so successful is because to get everything out of a land based alternative you would get from a cruise is generally going to be dramatically more expensive. If not in money, then in time. Going to three restaurants, Taking time to gaze at the sea, going to a water park, viewing an art gallery, seeing a live theatre show, and dancing the night away at a club is going to take a while on land and cost some money, but on a cruise ship that can be done in a single day and the price is included in the price of admission - which can often be comparable to the price you would pay to stay at a nice hotel.
I will argue that air travel is a necessary travel method for a globalized society. People need air travel to get from place to place within a reasonable amount of time. Even outside of business...
I will argue that air travel is a necessary travel method for a globalized society. People need air travel to get from place to place within a reasonable amount of time. Even outside of business purposes, which probably accounts for the majority of revenue for airlines, passengers have become reliant on flights for visiting family and for every other travel purpose. And in doing so, they disperse their tourist money with a wider net. The existence of economical airfares, due in part to price gouging/subsidizing through business class and first class, has also made it possible for people to relocate to jobs across the country, yet still feel like they're just a few hours from their family. Air travel, and airports, have become a necessary and essential evil.
Also, one thing that the article (and flight-shaming) miss the mark on is that commercial, passenger airline flights are actually essential to shipping. While UPS, FedEx, DHL, and other commercial freight operators run their own aircraft, and have their own airports, commercial passenger flights sell a not insignificant amount of cargo space to USPS, Royal Mail, etc. Cruise ships generally don't do that at the same scale (though they sometimes still carry on the tradition of helping to transport mail), if at all. Maybe the mega intercontinental cruises do a fair bit, but unlike the airline industry the cruise ships can be profitably pretty quickly after the passenger boards.
The benefit of aircraft in transporting cargo is one of the reasons why flight was able to be commercially feasible in the first place -- we need to be able to send mail and parcels quickly. Airmail made it so that we can reach locales that are otherwise isolated and do it faster than by horse or train (the better analog of cruise ships, imo). So the airline industry has an advantage in that it was purpose-built to connect commodities and business as well as passengers with their destinations with minimal infrastructure in between. Air travel has become a part of transport and a part of how businesses operate at the speed and immediacy that they do. Cruise ships are a part of entertainment and so their burden in my mind is different.
to get everything out of a land based alternative you would get from a cruise is generally going to be dramatically more expensive. If not in money, then in time.
I get where you're coming from, but I'm concerned that if we value vacation time by how much we accomplish, we're vacationing wrong. We're also missing out on the adventures along the way. Not everyone wants to have hardcore adventures, or even unexpected occurrences, but walking a road you literally haven't been, even just between one venue and another in a city, provides way more opportunity to do a little window shopping or check out some place that you wouldn't have heard about on TikTok's Top 10 Most TikTokable Places or whatever. Even if that doesn't sound appealing, free-will and spontaneity is a huge advantage over the captive-market place and up-selling that happens onboard a ship (tourist-trap/night-life cities like Las Vegas or Roppongi not withstanding).
As an aside, there's definitely a sense safety to be had onboard a ship (even if more people seem to be murdered on ships than aircraft ;)). It's probably even safer to be in the throngs dispensed on a port town ready to host such people, but I also feel like to an extent that lets people not build up the necessary street smarts to just get around normally? And then be able to travel just that little bit further abroad next time? I'm not the most social person, but traveling alone has become a lot more comfortable with practice and if I did it with a tour group the learning curve would be longer and less meaningful.
Also, if we have to spend more to have a shorter vacation on a cruise ship than land-based alternatives, haven't we just paid more to shorten our own vacation? Obviously this gets into systemic problems with time off in the U.S. and other places, but for some Europeans this is less of a problem and they can utilize their longer vacations to have cheaper, longer, and I would objectively say more satisfying holidays that don't involve being rushed place to place. I'd rather learn to enjoy that other pace of life and appreciate the things in between as much as the destination, than be told what an epic adventure I'll have once we reach port, but in the mean time the 3-storey water slide is only 20 bucks per person.
You’ve honestly written too much for me to reasonably respond to any one given thing. I will say that there are things that we disagree on as far as what is “worth it” and why. Fast parcel...
You’ve honestly written too much for me to reasonably respond to any one given thing. I will say that there are things that we disagree on as far as what is “worth it” and why. Fast parcel delivery is for the most part usually only a requirement for artificial and arbitrary reasons, though there are of course exceptions like human organs for transplant.
Sorry I know I was wordy. :P I was just pointing out that the postal system has been a primary driver in a lot of developments that have knock-on effects for quality of life, including the...
Sorry I know I was wordy. :P
I was just pointing out that the postal system has been a primary driver in a lot of developments that have knock-on effects for quality of life, including the transcontinental railroad, and airlines supplanted that for a reason (even if they have to beg for bailouts regularly). I feel like we're indentured to the benefits of airlines and air travel. Cruise lines offer a different set of costs and benefits.
I don't think you were wordy; you just had a lot to say! We've all been there. And even if I don't agree with you I'm enjoying the conversation. I'm not saying that the postal system is useless. I...
I don't think you were wordy; you just had a lot to say! We've all been there. And even if I don't agree with you I'm enjoying the conversation.
I'm not saying that the postal system is useless. I don't know anyone who would. All I'm saying is that there is very rarely an actual need for mass transport of parcels via air. Here in the US trains were a huge deal that quite literally shaped the history of the country, including being a major advantage to the Union during the Civil War. Since then they have been very poorly managed by private entities to get the most possible return on investment rather than being useful infrastructure for the public good. It's the reason why there's essentially zero high-speed rail in the country.
But not all postal innovations are good. One of the big ones we are currently dealing with is Amazon's model of free shipping and free returns. As a result of it, people are ordering things they don't necessarily need, and are getting poor quality products. When they return them, they rarely if ever get sent back to the warehouses and are instead sent to liquidators. If they don't get sold from there they go to landfills.
Unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of places on land that mirror the all-inclusive nature of cruising. Perhaps because of labor costs and laws that are often skirted out at sea.
Unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of places on land that mirror the all-inclusive nature of cruising. Perhaps because of labor costs and laws that are often skirted out at sea.
I'm a bit curious about your logic here. The cruise ships are bringing more jobs, increasing demand, while the supply stays the same or maybe increases to meet the demand. Surely the supply of...
competition for jobs in high-unemployed areas keeps wages depressed
I'm a bit curious about your logic here. The cruise ships are bringing more jobs, increasing demand, while the supply stays the same or maybe increases to meet the demand. Surely the supply of workers isn't increasing faster than the demand solely die to cruises.
In areas with high unemployment, I'd expect those temporary and seasonal tourism-industry jobs to be hard to get because there are so many people applying for the position. And when it's not...
In areas with high unemployment, I'd expect those temporary and seasonal tourism-industry jobs to be hard to get because there are so many people applying for the position. And when it's not tourist season, or wedding season, you might be out of a job. As non-salaried workers they're also at the disadvantage of having wages set rather low because employers know someone else will fill that spot. Much like the fast food industry until they were forced (by law or circumstance) to increase wages.
Compare that to cities, where there's a cost of living associated with moving to an area with high-paying entertainment or service industry jobs. People in lower-incoming housing have access to lower-income jobs. There are parts of NYC where a waiter might reasonably expect to make over $100K a year just in tips. It's not a bad gig, but the cost of living might be so high that that person's "just scraping by" with minimal lifestyle changes. And they might still be making minimum wage as a result of all those hefty tips.
But if you live on an island in the Caribbean or Pacific, there's a captive workforce and the jobs that cruise ships bring in are similar to fast-food. Tours, tourist shops, and tourist restaurants serve the specific clientele, with specific budgets, that the cruise industry brings them. The operators might be able to hike prices in certain cases, and certainly places like Hawaii charge different prices for native Hawaiians than non-native people and tourists, but if the cruise lines think that a given destination isn't "affordable" to their clientele, then that destination is changed out for a new one. Now the cruise ships aren't bringing any jobs.
On the subject of Hawaii, they're in an interesting position because they have an inter-island cruise ship that goes around on a weekly rotation. I don't know how cruise tourism impacts their overall economy, but tourism makes up a good amount of it (about 25% of GDP inclusive of direct and indirect impact (PDF)). For some perspective on unemployment and poverty, the number of Hawaiian citizens living in poverty increased from 9% in 2018 to 15% in 2022. Over the same period unemployment has gone from 2.4% in 2018 to a high of 11.7% in 2020, back down to ~3.5% in 2022. To make a broad assumption, it seems like tourism industry-related jobs aren't enough to keep people afloat if the number of people living in poverty is historically higher than the unemployment rate (because if you have a job, shouldn't it pay enough to get by?).
Let's do some math. Consider United Airlines. In their first class long haul international flights, United offers first class "open suite" seats that are 22"x78" on their 777-200 layout 1. In the...
Most importantly, it does not follow the same line of reasoning as other "premium" methods of travel, like Rovos Rail, or first class flying, which focus on respectable improvements to the travel experience, but without going massively out of their way to turn the trip into a seaside carnival.
Let's do some math. Consider United Airlines. In their first class long haul international flights, United offers first class "open suite" seats that are 22"x78" on their 777-200 layout 1. In the same layout, economy seats are 18"x34". The first class seat takes up the area of 2.8 economy seats. Now, area isn't a perfect measurement, as weight does have some effect on plane fuel economy. A first class passenger and their luggage will not weigh anywhere near as much, on average, as two economy class passengers and their luggage. Still, even with this weight effect in mind, it seems reasonable to estimate that a first class passenger is still consuming about twice as much of a plane's overall capacity as an economy passenger is. This is generally compatible with articles I've found such as this one.
So in terms of CO2, flying first class really is like choosing to take a cruise ship instead of flying. Both will about double your net CO2 footprint. I imagine premium rail transport options such as traveling in a private sleeper cabin would be similar.
I think it's important not to confuse actual quantifiable facts with vibes when it comes to assessing environmental impact. That kind of thinking is how you end up with people in sprawling suburbs thinking they're living more sustainably than people in dense urban cores. Living in a place surrounded by grass is, in a very literal sense, "green," but the actual CO2 emissions of people living in sprawling suburbs are far higher than those in denser cities. And lawns do very little for biodiversity.
It would be interesting to see the numbers on CO2 emissions based on cruise ship booking class. You would likely see similar ranges in per person carbon emissions be much higher for the larger and more expensive rooms as you do for the first class airline seats.
But regardless, the point remains. Yes, cruising is a luxury; I myself have never been on one, and the idea isn't necessarily the most appealing to me. Still, I don't want to denigrate cruises unnecessarily. I get that cruise ships certainly have a more wasteful "vibe" going on, but it seems the average CO2 emissions of a cruise are about equivalent to those of someone taking a first-class airline ticket. And crucially, cruise ships are actually destinations, not modes of transport. To really make a fair comparison, you would need to calculate the total home-to-home CO2 emissions of entire vacations. The person in the first class airline cabin could easily be in that seat because they're flying to a port city to catch a reservation for a cruise, where they'll be staying in a luxury room 10x the size of the peon cabins.
The Icon can hold about 10k total passengers plus crew at maximum capacity. But this brings up a good point. What are the total emissions of a cruise ship with 10k people compared to a town with a...
The Icon can hold about 10k total passengers plus crew at maximum capacity. But this brings up a good point. What are the total emissions of a cruise ship with 10k people compared to a town with a population of 10k? Obviously you can't compare 1:1 since a town has more overall space than a cruise ship but the idea is interesting. Also, cruise ships probably have more things to do than a small town with a population of 5k-10k.
I wonder how much of it comes down to taxes. I assume transactions at sea in international waters aren't subject to nearly as many, as if they were all in an enclosed theme-park-cum-hotel complex...
And frankly, albeit this is a personal opinion, these are all things you could do inland, with a much greater level of comfort. Certainly the gimmick of doing it all on sea should not be a deciding factor, but alas, it is.
I wonder how much of it comes down to taxes. I assume transactions at sea in international waters aren't subject to nearly as many, as if they were all in an enclosed theme-park-cum-hotel complex on land.
When Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas embarks on its first official voyage on Jan. 27, the journey is sure to make waves. The world’s largest cruise ship, the Icon is over 1,000 feet long (360 meters) and weighs in around 250,000 gross registered tons. It boasts 20 different decks; 40 restaurants, bars and lounges; seven pools; six waterslides and a 55-foot waterfall. Royal Caribbean says its boat will usher in “a new era of vacations.”
In 2022, Bryan Comer, director of the Marine Program at the International Council on Clean Transportation examined the carbon footprint of cruising as compared to a hotel stay plus air travel — since cruises are effectively floating hotels. His analysis found that a person taking a US cruise for 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) on the most efficient cruise line would be responsible for roughly 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of CO2, compared with 518 pounds (235 kilograms) for a round-trip flight and a stay in a four-star hotel. In other words: Taking a cruise generates “about double the amount of total greenhouse gas emissions” as flying, Comer says.
I'm also disappointed that we haven't managed to utilize more nuclear-powered ships. I read somewhere that the Russians have the most (including a nuclear-powered ice-breaker), which is...
I'm also disappointed that we haven't managed to utilize more nuclear-powered ships. I read somewhere that the Russians have the most (including a nuclear-powered ice-breaker), which is concerning, but the west has plenty of expertise in building and maintaining nuclear reactors and you'd think all these folks coming out of the navy working on nuclear subs would need some jobs in related fields.
I always thought it'd be cool to take the self-contained reactor for "neighborhood" power and utilize it on large cargo ships. I think Toshiba had the idea for self-contained units that would dispense energy at a certain rate for a certain amount of time and then could be swapped out with a new one while the old one is dismantled/refurbished. In practice it's like battery-swapping in EVs and like with cars, it's not the operator or owner of the vessel that needs expertise with working on them, Toshiba or the manufacturer would do that when they get the unit back. Having a self-contained unit might also reduce the risks of tampering and some other concerns, so maybe from the standpoint of safety it would be a fairly viable option for non-passenger vessels.
I'm not disappointed in the lack of capacity. I'm disappointed that it does not exist because humans suck. Someone would cut a corner to make a back or someone would destroy it to gain power....
I'm not disappointed in the lack of capacity. I'm disappointed that it does not exist because humans suck. Someone would cut a corner to make a back or someone would destroy it to gain power. Basically, civilian nuclear is so limited because humans suck. I wish we didn't suck.
It seems like this is a very unfair comparison that is missing a lot of holistic data. Comparing emissions per passenger-kilometer doesn’t quite make sense as a metric since a cruise ship is much...
It seems like this is a very unfair comparison that is missing a lot of holistic data. Comparing emissions per passenger-kilometer doesn’t quite make sense as a metric since a cruise ship is much more than just a boat. Even adding the emissions of a hotel doesn’t cover the full picture. As the article mentions towards the end the time the ships spend docked also needs to be taken into account, as does the addition of shore power. But then you also have to add in the impact of a casino, water park, several bars, movie theaters, and stage shows restaurants, plus the transportation to and from those destinations. They are all small things individually, but they do add up, especially when you are doing them all continually. Sure you could stay in your cabin all trip, but practically nobody does that. And sure, most of this will be small beans, but they do add up. Without doing all the math it’s easy to make cruise ships a punching bag. It’s the one of the only vacations where it’s easy to measure all of the emissions because it’s all in one place being taken care of by one company.
Pointing out that people typically fly to get to their cruise is completely fair, though it’s still not exactly comparable. If you live outside of the area of a hub your flights are not likely to be direct anyways. Flights with layaways are common, and to my understanding it burns a lot more fuel to take multiple flights than to travel the same distance with one flight.
Generally speaking, these comparisons are too generalized to give you a real idea of what the difference in impact really would be. Every itinerary is going to be different, and they can change a lot depending on the ship and how it is operated. The only time I have seen someone try to figure out a real-world comparison was when a user here on tildes wrote about their attempt recently.
This article demonizes a specific new ship, but it’s actually fairly efficient when you consider how many people it holds and how it operates when you compare it to some of the other ships currently being operated. The Margaritaville at Sea, for instance, is practically a living dinosaur that was built some 40-odd years ago and still burns the same high-pollution fuel as it was originally designed for. It’s a relatively tiny ship, so it’s not moving a bunch of people to offset the per-person figures. It only has one route simply because it burns so much fuel it cannot go further than that destination safely. Ships like that and the companies that operate them are the ones that should be getting the most attention. The big operators get a lot of flack (understandably so since they are obviously going to be responsible for the most emissions), but at the very least they are making good faith attempts to improve, even going so far as to swap out engines and install hardware to reduce emissions on their older ships or at least retiring them.
Unironically, my favorite thing about cruise ships is that they're monuments to the technological and capital resources of the west. There are whole market sectors built around shipbuilding...
Unironically, my favorite thing about cruise ships is that they're monuments to the technological and capital resources of the west. There are whole market sectors built around shipbuilding (shipbuilding accounts for a few percent of Norway's GDP) that replicates what we already have on land. We built skyscrapers as monuments to cities and urban infrastructure prowess (and straight up individual wealth), we built malls and theme parks as testaments to the power and health of the middle class, then we used those same resources to make mall-theme park-skyscraper hybrids that can float. Pretty amazing.
But cruise ships are really bad for the environment in a lot of ways. They're also generators of toxicity in terms of attitudes and consumptive behavior where its encouraged to believe that everything is disposable and the end-goal of passengers is to get what they want. This happens on guided tours and safari, too -- people just want to see a lion kill, and have no concept of enjoying the natural world or the adventure in getting there. Cruise ships run the risk of concentrating and perpetuating unhealthy tourist assumptions and overly broad Cliff's Notes versions of local social norms, insights into local cultures, and so on. Like tour buses, cruise ships surround these passengers with like-minded people who descend on tourist destinations with a singular, consumptive purpose. Each destination is assaulted, exploited, then thrown away at the end of the day. Check mark; they've been there and done that. On to the next one.
Meanwhile, tourists that have to go on a more conventional unguided trip have to navigate new surrounds in smaller groups or individually, interact with the host destination in a completely different manner. Maybe even learn some of the local language or interact with people who aren't catering to the types of tourists coming off cruise ships. They don't have to be respectful of local norms, but they're more likely to face consequences if they're not. They're also more likely to come into contact with actual local customs and learn insights about the country or city they're visiting they wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to learn.
As another comment mentioned, cruise ships feel like a dispensable luxury and they replicate experiences that can be had, and already exist, on land. I think that a lot of people dismiss the environmental impact of cruise ships and transoceanic shipping because there's so much of it and it seems like the norm. It doesn't have to be. And people don't even know about the environmental costs of deep sea fishing and the economic consequences when regional fisheries collapse. But the other environmental impact of cruise ships is that passengers are paying for an illusion and taking that illusion to places that are exotic and worthy of visiting specifically because they haven't created something totally artificial.
The article mentions the replacement of cruise ship generator diesel fuels with LNG, and ultimately methanol. One of the biggest limitations on replacing aviation fuels is energy density per unit...
The article mentions the replacement of cruise ship generator diesel fuels with LNG, and ultimately methanol.
One of the biggest limitations on replacing aviation fuels is energy density per unit weight, and you'd think this would be less of a concern in shipping. But LNG has a quarter, and methanol half, of the energy density per unit weight that diesel provides. I don't have data handy on how that might change ship architecture, but intuitively, this would be a big effort.
There are other problems too – I spoke to some people at Swiss Re about shipping rates at a party a while back and they charge higher rates for methanol because if it catches fire the flames are...
There are other problems too – I spoke to some people at Swiss Re about shipping rates at a party a while back and they charge higher rates for methanol because if it catches fire the flames are invisible to the naked eye. They are a bit stuck because they are trying to push shipping companies to adopt less greenhouse gas intensive fuels as well.
That's an excellent article, and I can't for sure say if I was surprised that cruise ships emit twice as much carbon as flying. However, there is something that compounds this even further: flying is often a necessity, and just as instrumental to transport as trains, cars or coaches. And yet, as the article mentions, "flight-shaming" is a thing, whilst cruise ships are free to run on sooty, inferior oil, and face little to no pressure to modernise.
Certainly no businessman is taking cruise ships to their next meeting, nor would I take cruise ships to visit family abroad. Cruise ships are, by all means, a dispensable luxury, and that reflects on the industry's commitments in past years.
Modern cruise ships dwarf the Titanic in terms of size and weight and constantly pack in more and more features into their ships, ranging from karting tracks to full-on coasters, all as part of an arms race that completely disregards efficiency.
And frankly, albeit this is a personal opinion, these are all things you could do inland, with a much greater level of comfort. Certainly the gimmick of doing it all on sea should not be a deciding factor, but alas, it is. Most importantly, it does not follow the same line of reasoning as other "premium" methods of travel, like Rovos Rail, or first class flying, which focus on respectable improvements to the travel experience, but without going massively out of their way to turn the trip into a seaside carnival.
We haven't been building increasingly larger trains to accommodate ridiculously large on-board amenities, and planes like the 747 and the A380 are falling out of favour precisely because smaller planes work just as well without compromising first class experiences too much, but cruise ships the size of a village get a pass for some reason.
I don't think one can really compare cruise ships to flying. Other than the fact that they both eventually take you places, the parallels end there. Beyond just moving people from A to B, cruise ships have to support an entire hotel load in addition to propulsion. Instead of being confined to 3 sqft of space for your entire flight, a cruise ship gives you your own personal space (with your own bed, bathroom, shower and relaxing space) in addition to communal entertainment, retail and dining spaces. Instead of a passenger/crew ratio of 50:1 on a plane, a cruise has a ratio of 2 or 3:1. And let's not even think of trying to compare cruise ship meals to airline food.
I'll admit bias here, I like cruises. I think they're a nice way to visit a bunch of places in a relatively short period of time. As long as you take some time to get out of the touristy port areas (at least in places where it is safe to do so), you can get a taste of where you might want to to take a longer trip. My wife and I returned to Aruba for a week for our honeymoon after discovering it during a cruise stop. But I get that it's not for everyone.
I also don't think that it's fair to say that cruise ships don't modernize. They've made significant strides towards the reduction of emissions over the years. It's obviously still not where it needs to be, but again, you have to be realistic about emissions by considering the services being offered to passengers (basically a floating city instead of a flying tin can).
I'm not trying to convince you to like cruises. But flying and cruising are very, very different and don't deserve comparison. Flying is purely about getting to the destination as quickly and economically as possible, and cruising is very much about the journey (since the final destination is often where you started).
That's a very good point, and I agree to an extent. I've had friends go on cruises to excellent, exquisite locations and they most certainly enjoyed it, and there was no other way to achieve that. However, my main gripe is with how cruise ships got larger and larger for increasingly diminishing benefits, and these often outweigh the gains in efficiency.
For example, having a casino inside a cruise ship feels sensible, but when you move towards things like waterparks, or 12 different restaurants, it starts to feel like there should be a limit. These require an exponentially higher amount of resources, and the industry seems to gravitate towards these larger cruise ships.
As for modernisation, yes, I agree, there was modernisation and I don't think I phrased it too well, but ultimately, trains went through blistering innovation in the last years, without sacrificing comfort (admittedly in different conditions), and in the meantime, cruise ships can still cruise with dirtier, heavier oil, and I feel like the switch to alternate fuels (which are less energy dense) like LNG is not possible if size keeps increasing.
I don't want to get rid of all cruises, but the industry should definitely stop trying to create floating cities, and instead, focus on delivering excellent experiences without getting stuck in an unending arms race.
The Icon, which is the ship featured in the article, does actually run in LNG. There will eventually hit a point where these ships just can't be any larger. But with the increased size also comes an increased number of passengers who can be served as well, which usually requires more amenities to avoid crowding.
While I don't know how much of a difference it will make, as you noted, they're essentially floating cities. It's a bit dishonest to compare them to just a flight and 4-star hotel, because most people will do things outside of the hotel. Perhaps an all-inclusive resort like a Club Med would be a better comparison. I have no idea how that would change the calculus, though.
I agree, cruise ships seem like a dispensable luxury. They're an extra environmental and social burden in ways that air travel doesn't represent (at least if you want to keep a globalized society) and can't be mirrored by the depth of travel that tour buses provide. I think cruise ships embody and engender, more than any other form of tourism-transport, some unhealthy attitudes even if it seems easier for a passenger to dip their toes into visiting a bunch of new places.
Not all, but a lot of tourists get tricked into thinking that the experience that exists when a cruise ship makes port is more or less the norm for that locale. It's not, and in some cases this hyper-concentrated tourism is creating unhealthy social and economic dependencies for the communities attempting to profit from that tourism (crime and corruption are said to be more concentrated as a result, competition for jobs in high-unemployed areas keeps wages depressed). These countries and cities and ports can become pressured to keep accepting what amounts to the soft power economic persuasion that is parking a money-dispensing skyscraper off-shore and demanding a good time, even at their own expense.
In some cases, cruise ships don't even go anywhere (in the cases of the cruise ships that run a circular route, or just island-hop or castle-hop). They provide similar services to that hotels, malls, and entertainment venues in a city, but concentrate the clientele in a single area. When they offload those passengers on exotic ports, they warp the reality of the port for the few hours passengers are allowed on shore and pivot a lot of the services industry to cater to an influx of tourists in one highly concentrated area. It's industrial scale livestock farming versus free range and low-impact alternatives. Outside of when cruise ship tourists are there, the port and local town have a different vibe even when hosting tourists from other places.
Compare that to travelers descending on a city and distributing their money across a wider swath of entertainment venues, shopping districts, restaurants, rental companies, and services. Places that already exist as part of a city's economic infrastructure and depend on appealing to both locals and tourists. I think the vibe is so substantially different that it's worth preserving that local feel even without factoring in the environmental benefits of just making do with what we already have on land.
I don't think I agree with you that cruise ships don't have the same burdens that other forms of travel have - air travel in particular. Airports are definately hyper-local distortions of the economy and have a huge effect on the way the communities around them are built. I would agree with you that cruises are a dispensable luxury, but if you're making that arguement then the next logical step is that almost everything related to vacationing is as well.
I do like your argument about the concentration of wealth, but the reason why cruise lines are so successful is because to get everything out of a land based alternative you would get from a cruise is generally going to be dramatically more expensive. If not in money, then in time. Going to three restaurants, Taking time to gaze at the sea, going to a water park, viewing an art gallery, seeing a live theatre show, and dancing the night away at a club is going to take a while on land and cost some money, but on a cruise ship that can be done in a single day and the price is included in the price of admission - which can often be comparable to the price you would pay to stay at a nice hotel.
I will argue that air travel is a necessary travel method for a globalized society. People need air travel to get from place to place within a reasonable amount of time. Even outside of business purposes, which probably accounts for the majority of revenue for airlines, passengers have become reliant on flights for visiting family and for every other travel purpose. And in doing so, they disperse their tourist money with a wider net. The existence of economical airfares, due in part to price gouging/subsidizing through business class and first class, has also made it possible for people to relocate to jobs across the country, yet still feel like they're just a few hours from their family. Air travel, and airports, have become a necessary and essential evil.
Also, one thing that the article (and flight-shaming) miss the mark on is that commercial, passenger airline flights are actually essential to shipping. While UPS, FedEx, DHL, and other commercial freight operators run their own aircraft, and have their own airports, commercial passenger flights sell a not insignificant amount of cargo space to USPS, Royal Mail, etc. Cruise ships generally don't do that at the same scale (though they sometimes still carry on the tradition of helping to transport mail), if at all. Maybe the mega intercontinental cruises do a fair bit, but unlike the airline industry the cruise ships can be profitably pretty quickly after the passenger boards.
The benefit of aircraft in transporting cargo is one of the reasons why flight was able to be commercially feasible in the first place -- we need to be able to send mail and parcels quickly. Airmail made it so that we can reach locales that are otherwise isolated and do it faster than by horse or train (the better analog of cruise ships, imo). So the airline industry has an advantage in that it was purpose-built to connect commodities and business as well as passengers with their destinations with minimal infrastructure in between. Air travel has become a part of transport and a part of how businesses operate at the speed and immediacy that they do. Cruise ships are a part of entertainment and so their burden in my mind is different.
I get where you're coming from, but I'm concerned that if we value vacation time by how much we accomplish, we're vacationing wrong. We're also missing out on the adventures along the way. Not everyone wants to have hardcore adventures, or even unexpected occurrences, but walking a road you literally haven't been, even just between one venue and another in a city, provides way more opportunity to do a little window shopping or check out some place that you wouldn't have heard about on TikTok's Top 10 Most TikTokable Places or whatever. Even if that doesn't sound appealing, free-will and spontaneity is a huge advantage over the captive-market place and up-selling that happens onboard a ship (tourist-trap/night-life cities like Las Vegas or Roppongi not withstanding).
As an aside, there's definitely a sense safety to be had onboard a ship (even if more people seem to be murdered on ships than aircraft ;)). It's probably even safer to be in the throngs dispensed on a port town ready to host such people, but I also feel like to an extent that lets people not build up the necessary street smarts to just get around normally? And then be able to travel just that little bit further abroad next time? I'm not the most social person, but traveling alone has become a lot more comfortable with practice and if I did it with a tour group the learning curve would be longer and less meaningful.
Also, if we have to spend more to have a shorter vacation on a cruise ship than land-based alternatives, haven't we just paid more to shorten our own vacation? Obviously this gets into systemic problems with time off in the U.S. and other places, but for some Europeans this is less of a problem and they can utilize their longer vacations to have cheaper, longer, and I would objectively say more satisfying holidays that don't involve being rushed place to place. I'd rather learn to enjoy that other pace of life and appreciate the things in between as much as the destination, than be told what an epic adventure I'll have once we reach port, but in the mean time the 3-storey water slide is only 20 bucks per person.
You’ve honestly written too much for me to reasonably respond to any one given thing. I will say that there are things that we disagree on as far as what is “worth it” and why. Fast parcel delivery is for the most part usually only a requirement for artificial and arbitrary reasons, though there are of course exceptions like human organs for transplant.
Sorry I know I was wordy. :P
I was just pointing out that the postal system has been a primary driver in a lot of developments that have knock-on effects for quality of life, including the transcontinental railroad, and airlines supplanted that for a reason (even if they have to beg for bailouts regularly). I feel like we're indentured to the benefits of airlines and air travel. Cruise lines offer a different set of costs and benefits.
I don't think you were wordy; you just had a lot to say! We've all been there. And even if I don't agree with you I'm enjoying the conversation.
I'm not saying that the postal system is useless. I don't know anyone who would. All I'm saying is that there is very rarely an actual need for mass transport of parcels via air. Here in the US trains were a huge deal that quite literally shaped the history of the country, including being a major advantage to the Union during the Civil War. Since then they have been very poorly managed by private entities to get the most possible return on investment rather than being useful infrastructure for the public good. It's the reason why there's essentially zero high-speed rail in the country.
But not all postal innovations are good. One of the big ones we are currently dealing with is Amazon's model of free shipping and free returns. As a result of it, people are ordering things they don't necessarily need, and are getting poor quality products. When they return them, they rarely if ever get sent back to the warehouses and are instead sent to liquidators. If they don't get sold from there they go to landfills.
Unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of places on land that mirror the all-inclusive nature of cruising. Perhaps because of labor costs and laws that are often skirted out at sea.
I'm a bit curious about your logic here. The cruise ships are bringing more jobs, increasing demand, while the supply stays the same or maybe increases to meet the demand. Surely the supply of workers isn't increasing faster than the demand solely die to cruises.
In areas with high unemployment, I'd expect those temporary and seasonal tourism-industry jobs to be hard to get because there are so many people applying for the position. And when it's not tourist season, or wedding season, you might be out of a job. As non-salaried workers they're also at the disadvantage of having wages set rather low because employers know someone else will fill that spot. Much like the fast food industry until they were forced (by law or circumstance) to increase wages.
Compare that to cities, where there's a cost of living associated with moving to an area with high-paying entertainment or service industry jobs. People in lower-incoming housing have access to lower-income jobs. There are parts of NYC where a waiter might reasonably expect to make over $100K a year just in tips. It's not a bad gig, but the cost of living might be so high that that person's "just scraping by" with minimal lifestyle changes. And they might still be making minimum wage as a result of all those hefty tips.
But if you live on an island in the Caribbean or Pacific, there's a captive workforce and the jobs that cruise ships bring in are similar to fast-food. Tours, tourist shops, and tourist restaurants serve the specific clientele, with specific budgets, that the cruise industry brings them. The operators might be able to hike prices in certain cases, and certainly places like Hawaii charge different prices for native Hawaiians than non-native people and tourists, but if the cruise lines think that a given destination isn't "affordable" to their clientele, then that destination is changed out for a new one. Now the cruise ships aren't bringing any jobs.
On the subject of Hawaii, they're in an interesting position because they have an inter-island cruise ship that goes around on a weekly rotation. I don't know how cruise tourism impacts their overall economy, but tourism makes up a good amount of it (about 25% of GDP inclusive of direct and indirect impact (PDF)). For some perspective on unemployment and poverty, the number of Hawaiian citizens living in poverty increased from 9% in 2018 to 15% in 2022. Over the same period unemployment has gone from 2.4% in 2018 to a high of 11.7% in 2020, back down to ~3.5% in 2022. To make a broad assumption, it seems like tourism industry-related jobs aren't enough to keep people afloat if the number of people living in poverty is historically higher than the unemployment rate (because if you have a job, shouldn't it pay enough to get by?).
Let's do some math. Consider United Airlines. In their first class long haul international flights, United offers first class "open suite" seats that are 22"x78" on their 777-200 layout 1. In the same layout, economy seats are 18"x34". The first class seat takes up the area of 2.8 economy seats. Now, area isn't a perfect measurement, as weight does have some effect on plane fuel economy. A first class passenger and their luggage will not weigh anywhere near as much, on average, as two economy class passengers and their luggage. Still, even with this weight effect in mind, it seems reasonable to estimate that a first class passenger is still consuming about twice as much of a plane's overall capacity as an economy passenger is. This is generally compatible with articles I've found such as this one.
So in terms of CO2, flying first class really is like choosing to take a cruise ship instead of flying. Both will about double your net CO2 footprint. I imagine premium rail transport options such as traveling in a private sleeper cabin would be similar.
I think it's important not to confuse actual quantifiable facts with vibes when it comes to assessing environmental impact. That kind of thinking is how you end up with people in sprawling suburbs thinking they're living more sustainably than people in dense urban cores. Living in a place surrounded by grass is, in a very literal sense, "green," but the actual CO2 emissions of people living in sprawling suburbs are far higher than those in denser cities. And lawns do very little for biodiversity.
It would be interesting to see the numbers on CO2 emissions based on cruise ship booking class. You would likely see similar ranges in per person carbon emissions be much higher for the larger and more expensive rooms as you do for the first class airline seats.
But regardless, the point remains. Yes, cruising is a luxury; I myself have never been on one, and the idea isn't necessarily the most appealing to me. Still, I don't want to denigrate cruises unnecessarily. I get that cruise ships certainly have a more wasteful "vibe" going on, but it seems the average CO2 emissions of a cruise are about equivalent to those of someone taking a first-class airline ticket. And crucially, cruise ships are actually destinations, not modes of transport. To really make a fair comparison, you would need to calculate the total home-to-home CO2 emissions of entire vacations. The person in the first class airline cabin could easily be in that seat because they're flying to a port city to catch a reservation for a cruise, where they'll be staying in a luxury room 10x the size of the peon cabins.
Where I live we would call cruise ship even a town (I suppose there are around 5000 peple onbiard?).
The Icon can hold about 10k total passengers plus crew at maximum capacity. But this brings up a good point. What are the total emissions of a cruise ship with 10k people compared to a town with a population of 10k? Obviously you can't compare 1:1 since a town has more overall space than a cruise ship but the idea is interesting. Also, cruise ships probably have more things to do than a small town with a population of 5k-10k.
I wonder how much of it comes down to taxes. I assume transactions at sea in international waters aren't subject to nearly as many, as if they were all in an enclosed theme-park-cum-hotel complex on land.
It is a shame that humanity can't be trusted to use nuclear power for commercial/civilian sea travel.
I'm also disappointed that we haven't managed to utilize more nuclear-powered ships. I read somewhere that the Russians have the most (including a nuclear-powered ice-breaker), which is concerning, but the west has plenty of expertise in building and maintaining nuclear reactors and you'd think all these folks coming out of the navy working on nuclear subs would need some jobs in related fields.
I always thought it'd be cool to take the self-contained reactor for "neighborhood" power and utilize it on large cargo ships. I think Toshiba had the idea for self-contained units that would dispense energy at a certain rate for a certain amount of time and then could be swapped out with a new one while the old one is dismantled/refurbished. In practice it's like battery-swapping in EVs and like with cars, it's not the operator or owner of the vessel that needs expertise with working on them, Toshiba or the manufacturer would do that when they get the unit back. Having a self-contained unit might also reduce the risks of tampering and some other concerns, so maybe from the standpoint of safety it would be a fairly viable option for non-passenger vessels.
I'm not disappointed in the lack of capacity. I'm disappointed that it does not exist because humans suck. Someone would cut a corner to make a back or someone would destroy it to gain power. Basically, civilian nuclear is so limited because humans suck. I wish we didn't suck.
It seems like this is a very unfair comparison that is missing a lot of holistic data. Comparing emissions per passenger-kilometer doesn’t quite make sense as a metric since a cruise ship is much more than just a boat. Even adding the emissions of a hotel doesn’t cover the full picture. As the article mentions towards the end the time the ships spend docked also needs to be taken into account, as does the addition of shore power. But then you also have to add in the impact of a casino, water park, several bars, movie theaters, and stage shows restaurants, plus the transportation to and from those destinations. They are all small things individually, but they do add up, especially when you are doing them all continually. Sure you could stay in your cabin all trip, but practically nobody does that. And sure, most of this will be small beans, but they do add up. Without doing all the math it’s easy to make cruise ships a punching bag. It’s the one of the only vacations where it’s easy to measure all of the emissions because it’s all in one place being taken care of by one company.
Pointing out that people typically fly to get to their cruise is completely fair, though it’s still not exactly comparable. If you live outside of the area of a hub your flights are not likely to be direct anyways. Flights with layaways are common, and to my understanding it burns a lot more fuel to take multiple flights than to travel the same distance with one flight.
Generally speaking, these comparisons are too generalized to give you a real idea of what the difference in impact really would be. Every itinerary is going to be different, and they can change a lot depending on the ship and how it is operated. The only time I have seen someone try to figure out a real-world comparison was when a user here on tildes wrote about their attempt recently.
This article demonizes a specific new ship, but it’s actually fairly efficient when you consider how many people it holds and how it operates when you compare it to some of the other ships currently being operated. The Margaritaville at Sea, for instance, is practically a living dinosaur that was built some 40-odd years ago and still burns the same high-pollution fuel as it was originally designed for. It’s a relatively tiny ship, so it’s not moving a bunch of people to offset the per-person figures. It only has one route simply because it burns so much fuel it cannot go further than that destination safely. Ships like that and the companies that operate them are the ones that should be getting the most attention. The big operators get a lot of flack (understandably so since they are obviously going to be responsible for the most emissions), but at the very least they are making good faith attempts to improve, even going so far as to swap out engines and install hardware to reduce emissions on their older ships or at least retiring them.
Unironically, my favorite thing about cruise ships is that they're monuments to the technological and capital resources of the west. There are whole market sectors built around shipbuilding (shipbuilding accounts for a few percent of Norway's GDP) that replicates what we already have on land. We built skyscrapers as monuments to cities and urban infrastructure prowess (and straight up individual wealth), we built malls and theme parks as testaments to the power and health of the middle class, then we used those same resources to make mall-theme park-skyscraper hybrids that can float. Pretty amazing.
But cruise ships are really bad for the environment in a lot of ways. They're also generators of toxicity in terms of attitudes and consumptive behavior where its encouraged to believe that everything is disposable and the end-goal of passengers is to get what they want. This happens on guided tours and safari, too -- people just want to see a lion kill, and have no concept of enjoying the natural world or the adventure in getting there. Cruise ships run the risk of concentrating and perpetuating unhealthy tourist assumptions and overly broad Cliff's Notes versions of local social norms, insights into local cultures, and so on. Like tour buses, cruise ships surround these passengers with like-minded people who descend on tourist destinations with a singular, consumptive purpose. Each destination is assaulted, exploited, then thrown away at the end of the day. Check mark; they've been there and done that. On to the next one.
Meanwhile, tourists that have to go on a more conventional unguided trip have to navigate new surrounds in smaller groups or individually, interact with the host destination in a completely different manner. Maybe even learn some of the local language or interact with people who aren't catering to the types of tourists coming off cruise ships. They don't have to be respectful of local norms, but they're more likely to face consequences if they're not. They're also more likely to come into contact with actual local customs and learn insights about the country or city they're visiting they wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to learn.
As another comment mentioned, cruise ships feel like a dispensable luxury and they replicate experiences that can be had, and already exist, on land. I think that a lot of people dismiss the environmental impact of cruise ships and transoceanic shipping because there's so much of it and it seems like the norm. It doesn't have to be. And people don't even know about the environmental costs of deep sea fishing and the economic consequences when regional fisheries collapse. But the other environmental impact of cruise ships is that passengers are paying for an illusion and taking that illusion to places that are exotic and worthy of visiting specifically because they haven't created something totally artificial.
The article mentions the replacement of cruise ship generator diesel fuels with LNG, and ultimately methanol.
One of the biggest limitations on replacing aviation fuels is energy density per unit weight, and you'd think this would be less of a concern in shipping. But LNG has a quarter, and methanol half, of the energy density per unit weight that diesel provides. I don't have data handy on how that might change ship architecture, but intuitively, this would be a big effort.
There are other problems too – I spoke to some people at Swiss Re about shipping rates at a party a while back and they charge higher rates for methanol because if it catches fire the flames are invisible to the naked eye. They are a bit stuck because they are trying to push shipping companies to adopt less greenhouse gas intensive fuels as well.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/N0kxx