Cruise Ships: Friend or Foe?
So, this cold weather is probably making you anticipate spring break already! But before you start signing up for those Caribbean cruises maybe you should take a look at the environmental impacts the ships have. The vision of all that crystal clear water may make you think that there is very little impact from cruise liners but you are sorely mistaken. There are very few water pollution laws created and those that are in place are very difficult to enforce. On an average day a cruise ship creates over 30,000 gallons of sewage, which is legally allowed to be dumped into oceans. This pollution kills plants, animals and eventually washes up on beaches. Much of the pollution that is dumped could easily be kept on board until it can be treated and disposed of properly, but this would create a greater cost for the cruise ship companies, which they are obviously not willing to pay. Occasionally, a cruise company is sued for breaking pollution laws, but dumping is hard to regulate and companies are rarely prosecuted.
So, next time your friends ask you about a cruise for spring break, take a minute to do a cost-benefit analysis and consider if environmental degradation is worth a nice tan.
8 comments:
I never really liked the idea of a cruise ship earlier, and now I know I would have difinitive reservations for going on a cruise. Although, an alternative to sailing a massive cruise ship to have the vision of crystal clear water, would likely be to fly to and from place to place and rent some sort of motorized boat to get the up-close and personal views that you would when on the cruiseliner. I think that maybe it is time for the traveling agencies to assess their roles in this problem and encourage more "green" alternatives.
Though I agree with Matt on travel agencies needing to find "greener" alternatives to cruise ships it will ultimately come down to the consumer whether they will work: and they won't. This is due to simple laziness. People today want to see the beautiful and pristine places our planet has to offer but they aren't willing to do anything to see them. What people today wish to do is to sit in comfy chair, sip on margaritas, and get a tan while looking across the crystal blue. Sound nice? Sure, but the problem is that nothing comes without a price and we are wasting our world for out children and grandchildren. It all comes down to OUR choices, so help the planet and don't be lazy...go buy a kayak
Sotiria, would you please edit your post to put the MSNBC link into a hyperlink?
Stopping short of hiring environmental monitors for every cruise ship, what would be an efficient way to enforce existing water pollution laws?
Obviously, the major reason that the cruise ships do not want to keep the waste on board until it can be disposed of properly, is because it cost them more. We need to design a more cost efficient way for the cruise ships to keep this waste on board or we could maybe set up more places for them to dump their waste so that they are more willing to do it because they do not have to carry the waste very long. And once we make it cheaper for the cruise lines to get rid of waste than the cruise ships have no reason to not follow environmental rules. So we should have a more severe punishment for them if they do not follow the rules.
First, about the social efficient level of cruise ship emissions, the government should hire some economists calculating the equilibrium level of marginal damages and marginal abatement costs; second, legislate a series of laws to regulate the emissions based on the results of the researches; third, we can establish a punishing mechanism, and therefore enforce the effectiveness of the laws. By the way, I think it’s very hard for an average person to do a scientific cost-benefit analysis, but after knowing those facts in the post, it may be helpful to decrease the demand for cruise ships.
It seems difficult to enforce any type of discharge regulation involving ships. I recently read an article in U.S. News that suggested when ships ballast needed to be regulated; the EPA appealed stating the Clean Water Act was for non-moving sources of pollution. Any attempt to regulate cruise ship waste would likely be met with the same kind of resistance. It maybe more cost affective and efficient to require all new cruise ships be built with a device that sterilizes waste before it’s discharged into the ocean. Devices that utilize irradiation technology to sterilize are already in use by the food industry and may be the best alternative to employing an environmental monitor for every ship.
It looks as though some people have answered the question Dr. Delemeester posed. I, agreeing with those above, that some of the best ways to deter cruise ship companies from polluting is 1. make the punishment harsher for serious cases of polluting and 2. require all new cruise ships to have more eco-friendly technology to clean the waste they are dumping.
On the list of problems for the oceans cruise ship's are probably on the bottom... where else do you recomend that the poop be dumped?
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