Voyages to nowhere: abdicating responsibility
“I don’t think you can have a really satisfactory life today without joining in the fight to save our planet…. We’re past the moment where inaction is acceptable.” —Kristine Tompkins You may not know who Kristine Tompkins is, but her Patagonia outdoor clothing company’s products can be found around the world. She is also one of the world’s foremost conservationists. The millions of acres of pristine lands that she and her now late husband Doug bought in southern Chile and Argentina have been the basis for national parks there. With the indispensable aid of many local groups and the added expertise of other conservationists, a widely successful campaign to bring back the jaguar and other megafauna continues to accelerate. Recently Tompkins spoke with Nate Hagens, the driving force behind The Great Simplification broadcasts, which, through conversations with inspiring individuals, endeavour to make sense of the climate and biodiversity crises and the possible solutions available to our world. In an interview titled “Rewilding 15 Million Acres: Why True Wealth Means More Than Money,” listeners learned that Tompkins’ approach to helping solve the world’s problems is to go at them relentlessly with all the power she can muster—and not look back. She speaks forcefully about how otherwise educated and well-off people abdicate their ethical responsibilities for a blinded consciousness. We usually think of the word ‘abdicate’ as in giving up, voluntarily or not, one’s kingdom or position as head of government, but Tompkins is clearly making this personal. Sure, increasingly governments, educational institutions and corporate executives have brazenly relinquished their social and Nature leadership roles, but so have most individuals, and particularly so in the rich west. This powerfully wrought interview points directly at us. https://tinyurl.com/tompkins-true-wealth So let’s talk cruise ships and the decision to take them as an abdication of our responsibility to be informed citizens. Most people have bought into the fake narrative given by the largest cruise companies that those ocean or river voyages are, or are on the way to being, a non-polluting way to have a vacation. Bluntly put, this is pure rubbish: food waste, specifically. Some liners are burning it for energy, while others are considering serving up smaller meals, but it seems that many privileged holidaymakers think that huge portions of food go with a cultural experience, and that abundance of food is an entitlement. We all know that food waste is at epidemic levels in our society, but cruise ships are famous for it. The sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from the heavy oil used in cruise ships have a massive impact on human health, but although there has been a push by cities affected by this pollution to electrify cruise ships while at port in order to allay local outrage, a minuscule number of ships have taken advantage of this objective. Although the cruise industry is embracing ‘natural’ gas energy to power its ships away from very dirty oil, methane gas (euphemistically called natural gas) contains its own turbocharged climate baggage, so it is not