‘Megayachts’ are environmentally indefensible. The world must ban them.
‘Megayachts’ are environmentally indefensible. The world must ban them.
Roman Abramovich’s yachts are said to emit more carbon than many small countries. This is unsustainable, and wrong
“The rich gazed at their superyachts, and decided they were not enough. The new breed of megayachts, which are at least 70 metres (230ft) in length, may be the most expensive moveable assets ever created.”
“First and foremost, owning a megayacht is the most polluting activity a single person can possibly engage in. Abramovich’s yachts emit more than 22,000 tonnes of carbon every year, which is more than some small countries. Even flying long-haul every day of the year, or air-conditioning a sprawling palace, would not get close to those emissions levels.
The bulk of these emissions happen whether or not a yacht actually travels anywhere. Simply owning one – or indeed building one – is an act of enormous climate vandalism.”
This is why I fucking hate the do your part bullshit.
Corporations and wealthy don't have the same pressure or responsibility, but it's us as consumers who have to put all the extra work and thought into changing our routines and habits (not to mention how much more it could cost)
Fuck these fucks. Greed killed the earth.
This is why I fucking hate the do your part bullshit.
Same thing with water usage. Our house had a nice, normal-sized lawn and we basically had to kill it a few years ago when the CA drought was really bad. It was a bummer because our house looked nice, but big picture, I understood why water restrictions were in place and did my part.
Meanwhile, there are 120+ golf courses in the Palm Springs/Coachella Valley area. Residential water usage in the state of CA accounts for like 10% of water usage and I'm over here having to kill my lawn. It was hard to reconcile those facts.
Water law in the west is really weird.
It was developed around the idea that the first mine in an area could use the water that they wanted, and the next mine in the area could do the same only inasmuch as it didn't affect the water available to the first mine.
So you've got water rights that are primarily based on seniority and continuing to use your allotment so you don't lose it. That's not very well aligned with goals of conservation.
I'm standing over my recycling bin agonizing over whether the plastic thing I've just washed out is recyclable or garbage, all while knowing my city doesn't even differentiate between the two. And then these guys will throw will have a party that has a bigger ecological footprint than I'll have on any year of my life.
The average carbon footprint in the US is 15 tons.
So the largest megayacht in the world pollutes as much as about 1,500 extra Americans.
Honestly, everyone needs to do their part. Billionaires, corporations and average Americans alike. It ain't gonna get fixed otherwise.
Now do cruise ships.
Per person, cruise ships are probably a couple of order of magnitude better than mega yacht… but yeah both are good.
I’d love to see cruise sail ships.
Cruise ships aren't all that much worse than long haul flights (specifics gonna depend on the ship and the plane but my first google results ended up with a 14 day cruise being roughly equivalent to four transatlantic flights) purely in terms of co2, just bc there are so many people on board. Though flights also need to cut emissions by a lot really, so that's still not great. And cruise ships tend to use fuel that releases other harmful chemicals beyond just greenhouse gases.
Still, to particularly focus on them rather than just one of many things that need to be reduced and also made more efficient feels a bit misplaced to me. Though I'd imagine that if sail container ships actually prove viable, sail cruise ships might follow.
And then jets.
Commercial? Private? We’re going to have to work hard on teleportation. From my understanding, disassembly isn’t the problem; reassembly is.
Start with cruise ships if you please.
Some of these megayachts are the size of a cruise ship, but only for one dude and his family. Hence all the pollution just for a handfull of people, who do not even use it most of the year.
I’m cool with that.
seems like the world should ban filthy wealth lifestyle. How should we proceed, any idea anyone ?
Gee I'm suddenly feeling very hungry
Dinner time
Taxes (eat 'em up!)
Expropriations without compensation* Much harder to evade
Bluntly banning Megayachts seems excessively interventionalist when you could instead ban the fossil fuel engines they use and ban the emissions. Make them pass a smog test that’s no more lenient than a car. Why not effectively force them to be wind and solar powered and thus force them to blow their money on advancing green energy? If that kills the megayacht business anyway, well then fair enough.
I actually think that's an awesome idea. Force them to be "green" mega yachts. They can't bitch about batteries being expensive, they're literally the richest people on the fucking planet. We shouldn't have to suffer even more just so they can be obscenely wealthy and cheap at the same time...
No one should own a mega yacht, even if its solar or wind powered. And its like 100% a given, that super rich would just pay double the price (compared to current mega yachts) to get them because they can
This is just a "feel bad" story rather than an actionable policy suggestion since, as the author acknowledges, regulating these yachts is going to be rather difficult because they can just sail somewhere else. Plenty of countries will welcome them in return for the economic activity associated with being a haven for the super-rich.
let them sail somewhere else then
without rich people
I've wondered about that. Ireland, Delaware, and Bermuda are all notorious tax havens, but are any of them actually any better off than they would be otherwise? I get the feeling that the benefits are going to a very select handful of people, and not, uh, trickling down.
Could regulate the manufacturing and maintenance/repairs.
Or deregulate the torpedo industry
And when they're moving, they're highly inefficient as well. With a displacement ship hull designed to part the water their top speed is limited by their own length. A ship cannot overtake its own bow wake and with a length of let's say 70 meters you end up at a top speed of about 20 knots. Which isn't slow, but also not that much faster than cargo or passenger transport (maybe going 10 to 15 knots).
While a cargo ship is mostly longer and could theoretically sail faster, it is designed to be economical. It gets an engine that is most efficient at a certain speed, for example 12 knots at ahead standard, the propeller is cut for efficiency etc.
A yacht is designed to be comfortable and fast. It gets powerful engines that combust however much they need to combust. The propeller may be designed to produce less noise or vibration instead of being most fuel efficient.
Watch them manage to ban canoes and write exemptions for the mega yachts. We know that's exactly what will happen.
One thing I personally hate about megayatchs is how boring they all look. They look basically the same, white with black, and its just super boring. If I were going to be an evil billionaire flaunting my wealth, I would build somethin cool, like a 1:1 scale replica of the American WW2 Tennessee-class battleship. Sail around the world with 14 inch guns, and rule the high seas, making every yatch cower before my mighty steel ship.
Then sink because its 2023 and I'm a greedy billionaire who neglects things like basic maintenance and common sense.
Little surprise, then, that megayachts have been associated with crimes including money laundering, prostitution and illegal drug use.
This comment works against the author’s credibility. You don’t need to spotlight controversial laws against the personal freedoms of consenting adults to make megayacht owners look bad. It’s like saying “the rapist also smokes marijuana!” And isn’t prostitution and drug consumption fair game in international waters?
Second, the fact that yacht owners can choose which country’s flag to sail under – and can fly a flag of convenience if they choose – means it would be extremely difficult to enforce such a tax.
That’s interesting. Though I didn’t know they had to pick a flag. Surely they could buy a tiny island and create their own country with their own laws. There’s a book on how to do that.
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, but
prostitution
consenting adults
No one human has any more claim to this orbiting rock than any other. Just that some people have acquired more means of persuasion to get what they want.
Those yachts probably aren't too difficult to commandeer.
Its not like tax havens already exist, adding real havens to their offerings wouldn't be the issue I guess.
Asking in earnest.. international water.. is the no laws thing for real? What's stopping some modern day Karli Morgenthau Green Peace types from blowing these boats up?
Asking for a friend....
I see it as self-sorting, with no need to ban them. Eventually, most of the world is either going to be climate migrants or impacted by climate migration or impacted by climate change in some other way, likely all three. Some of those impacted people might be really resentful about it. Some of those resentful people might see wealthy executives and oil companies as personally accountable. It probably won't take long for the wealthy to wise up and voluntarily give them up once it becomes clear what an acme bullseye they really are.
It probably won't take long for the wealthy to wise up and voluntarily give them up once it becomes clear what an acme bullseye they really are.
I don’t believe this, simply because the rich have also been busy buying and building mega secure doomsday bunkers.
I was going to sarcastically ask if they're going to move their yachts into their bunkers, but then realized I don't want to know the answer.
Anyone else read that as MeGAYachts and assume this article was about gay cruises being environmentally destructive?
The Guardian, a shill for oil?
Why 'ban yachts' when a carbon tax would achtually reduce fossil fuel consumption and emissions? I'll tell you why: because banning yachts doesn't put a restriction on fossil fuel consumption.
It bans yachts.
I agree, don't ban the yacht, eat the owners of yachts.
This hill worth dying on? How many are there in the world? I may be way wrong, but I'd imagine the CO2 output of these things is a drop in the global bucket.
Abramovich’s yachts emit more than 22,000 tonnes of carbon every year, which is more than some small countries.
If you drill into the next article and look at the chart, it looks like we're talking about one dude's yachts, plural. And he's a massive outlier.
Easy to say, "Fuck the billionaires! Fuck their feelings!" but banning anything costs political capitol as well as time and money.
I'm not going to piss myself off coming up with right-wing talking points, but we all know damn well there would be a dozen forms of shit fit. "Now the libs want to take your boat! Guess you don't deserve to spend your hard-earned money without their approval!"
And for dubious benefit we're going up against the very people who have the time and money to fight this? We got better, more impactful and practical, work to do than fight a handful of billionaires over a handful of boats.
Everything counts at this point, we can't afford to treat this edge case differently. Every single one of us needs to make efforts and take action. Some, a lot more than others for sure but every single action counts. A single dude polluting more than millions of people is not acceptable, it's about sending the message that we will all be affected by climate change.
No, everything does not count at this point. We are at war for the fate of our species, and I don't think that's overstating the point.
People are emotional creatures, not logical. This is Sales 101. You sell emotions, not facts. That's how you convince people, motivate people, bend them to your will. "Power to the Righteous People's Cause!" is failed, Cold War, communist propaganda.
Your post is emotional. Mine is, I feel, logical.
For all the reasons I outlined above, banning super yachts is a waste of political capital, emotional capital if you will.
We would be handing the billionaires a political win, a "meme" win, losing "hearts and minds", for very little benefit. And they have an outsized voice, yes? And we intend to antagonize them in this fashion?
If I'm buck naked and going up against the goddamned Batman, I'm shooting him in the face, not kicking his kneecap.
Easy to say, "Fuck the billionaires! Fuck their feelings!"
Tbf i don't think anyone has their feelings in mind. Not even to fuck'em.
The fashion industry has more emissions than the entire shipping industry
Imma need some sources on that one, but I've seen some crazy, non-intuitive shit in my time.
What a whiny article. Sure I agree with the spirit, but let's consider cruise ships and container vessels first if climate change is really the goal.
It's not about pollution per capita, it is the actual sum total that we should start with.
Container ships provide an important service for many many people, and are actually one of our most efficient forms of goods transport. These personal yachts on the other hand are pure vanity projects
There is no reason that cargo ships should be able to burn arbitrarily dirty fuel in international waters basically constantly.
There are plenty of comfort actions that are carbon costly, but that doesnt excuse the big polluters. It's like saying people like their showers too hot so we should take colder showers before Maersk has to upgrade their systems.
An Oasis class cruise ship consumes 9120L of fuel per hour. With the standard capacity being 5400, that's 1.6L / hour / passenger.
The lüressen Azzam uses 13,000L / hour. At 36 guests, that's 361L / passenger / hour.
Ok then I stand corrected.
If they run the same number of hours go after the yacht; however, the atmosphere doesn't care about per person use, so overall burn is really what I'm more concerned about.