BY LAHAR

When I talk to folks about cruise ships, most are unaware of how truly harmful they are. However, the more you learn, the more appalling it is. Every aspect of the industry is built on pollution and exploitation.

Cruise ships first appeared on my radar while helping to resist Puget Sound Energy's Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Refinery being built on the Puyallup Tribe's ancestral tide flats, also known as the Port of Tacoma. The main purpose of this facility is to supply fuel to ships. Claims that the project was in the public's interest because it would improve local air quality and emit fewer greenhouse gases (GHG) than other available fuels seemed hard to believe. I started researching marine fuels and found numerous studies showing that when all emissions are counted, from extraction to use, LNG is as bad, if not worse, than other fuels currently being used. With an eye on our local ports, I learned that the Port of Seattle was planning to build a new, third cruise ship terminal. It was easy to deduce that lugging around an entire resort while traveling is pretty fossil-fuel intensive, and clearly not a responsible way to vacation as we face a climate emergency. So a bunch of concerned residents came together and we formed Seattle Cruise Control.

From a climate perspective, cruise ships are the most polluting form of travel per passenger mile–even worse than airplanes. On top of that, almost 90% of Seattle’s cruise passengers aren’t local, adding in a roundtrip flight to the GHG footprint of the trip. The ships burn 30-50 gallons of fossil fuel for each mile traveled!

Living along the Salish Sea fosters a deep love and appreciation for the water, the salmon, the orcas, and the rest of the undersea ecosystem. The beauty of our region draws countless tourists every year to our coastlines. Yet the cruise ships welcomed by the Port of Seattle end up dumping four billion gallons of pollution directly into waterways during their journey to Alaska each year. Most of the pollution–sewage, greywater, garbage and toxic engine wash water known as “scrubber discharge”--gets dumped off the coast of Canada where regulations are more lax. Carnival Cruise Lines has been sanctioned multiple times for dumping inside protected areas, including Glacier Bay National Park. It’s important to remember that water isn’t bound by colonial boundaries and this destruction affects us here in Tacoma and everywhere.

Seattle is a big city, but cruise ships overwhelm the small towns in Alaska that they visit. Along with the daily arrival of thousands of tourists all at once, cruise season brings residents much more than they bargained for. Foot and vehicle traffic clogging local streets and attractions so badly that locals aren’t able to enjoy their own home. Smokestacks, often from several ships at once, spewing toxins, carcinogens, and particulate matter that can cause serious health impacts such as asthma, cancer, heart disease, birth defects and premature death. The sheer volume of visitors straining local infrastructure, such as the sewer system in Skagway, Alaska–a town with about twelve hundred residents that annually sees around one million cruise passengers. Noise pollution from loud foghorns, helicopter tours, and blaring music on deck. Truckloads of garbage regularly unloaded from the ships, filling local landfills. Many communities around the globe  have been pushing back against the pollution and exploitation, but cruise companies are fighting tooth and nail to keep decision-making agency away from residents. 

The exploitation and conditions of the lowest paid on-board workers are heartbreaking. Twelve- to-fourteen hour workdays, seven days a week, with no days off during an entire seven to ten  month deployment while making as little as two dollars per hour. Spending a majority of the year away from home, family and friends. Workers live with inadequate medical care, a high-stress environment, and lack protections from harassment or abuse. Racism and capitalism dictate that your country of origin will likely be the determining factor in your wage and assigned duties. The highest percentage of exploited workers are from the Philippines.

Is it right to entertain ourselves, to take vacations in such a way that we cause so much harm to the world and the people around us? Once we understand the nature of this industry, do we have a responsibility to do something about it? The Port of Seattle’s response relies heavily on greenwashing, lopsided economics & cringe-worthy justifications.

An example of the Port’s justification is claiming that if Seattle reduces or shuts down operations, the cruises will just go somewhere else. We wouldn’t accept this reasoning to support other toxic money-making ventures such as selling drugs to kids, or human trafficking, so why would this excuse hold water for cruise ships? And the Port of Seattle is not the passive landlord they often claim to be. Commissioners voted earlier this year to spend $800,000 on advertising their Alaska cruises to international travelers. In contrast, Norway has taken the bold step of requiring all cruise ships in its fjords be emission-free starting in 2030. And government officials in La Rochelle, France, are reducing cruise ship visits in order to meet their climate goals.

The Port of Seattle claims it aims to be “the greenest port in North America''. This is said with a straight face, despite having goals to vastly increase both airline flights and cruise sailings. The creation of a Seattle-Alaska “Green Cruise Corridor” allows for public bragging & invitations to speak at conferences like GreenTech and Cop 27, but it seems more like an excuse to keep polluting for decades to come. This is because there's little reason to expect meaningful results any time soon. Corridor participants have made no commitment to reducing GHG emissions by any particular amount or date and the agreement includes no deadlines or enforcement mechanisms. Participants – cruise companies and port authorities – have committed only to "explore the feasibility” of decarbonizing the cruise sector. What could possibly go wrong with depending on the industry to regulate itself and voluntarily lose profits in order to clean up its act? Lol.

These same cruise companies are trying to trick potential passengers into feeling less guilty about taking a cruise by marketing themselves as offering “green” or “sustainable” cruises. Propping the claims up on things like re-using some of the greywater before dumping it, adding enough solar panels to power one elevator, and of course, purchasing new ships that will run on so-called “green” LNG.

Meanwhile, back in Tacoma, Puget Sound Energy is working with the City government to amend their permit for the LNG Refinery to allow the buildout of infrastructure for transporting and loading the fracked gas onto bunker barges. These barges would then act somewhat like floating gas stations that could fill up LNG-powered ships in our region. The safety, health and environmental risks this expansion could pose won’t even be analyzed and there will be no public hearing or comment opportunities. The Puyallup Tribe and Earthjustice are still appealing the validity of an original permit for the facility in court. 

So Seattle gets the tourists while Tacoma gets the refineries, storage tanks and pollution which power the floating resorts. Our sacred waters and all the beings living within them get billions of gallons of toxic pollution. Communities in Alaska get to breathe the health-harming emissions of multiple ships docked each day for hours on end. Victoria BC gets truckloads of garbage and late night noise pollution after local shops are closed. Cruise executives and shareholders get to stockpile more wealth that should have gone to the people actually doing the hard work. Our climate gets hotter and more destabilized. Our children get to watch as we trash their inheritance and their future.  

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are things the Port of Seattle can do to protect people and the planet from this harmful industry. The most obvious is reducing the number of cruise sailings every year until we reach zero emissions and eliminate all toxic water pollution. Take action today and send the Port a message at bit.ly/capcruise.  

Learn more and sign up for the email list at SeattleCruiseControl.org