“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.”
Better to turn them into artificial reefs if you see them
Just a little public service <3
what do you do with owner
You can make reefs out of a lot of things.
(Fish) eat the rich
I heard they like submarines
compost helps the flowers grow
Tie them to a rail on the yacht.
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Capsize the rich
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.
California would probably have plenty of water if they didn’t allow the cultivation of thirsty crops in the goddamn desert. Everyone talks about California regulations (there are some silly ones), but what sticks out to me the most is the corporate shit they refuse to regulate.
SO. MUCH. FARMING.
why the fuck is a decades long drought stricken state responsible for so many water heavy crops??? Or any crops really???
It’s especially weird since we export so much water too. L.A. just happens to take… An inordinate amount.
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.
They are already experimenting with adding sails back to cruise ships, the potential cost savings should be enough to get the companies to change on their own.
I say this as an avid sailing but the downside of sails is that you cannot rely on them to get you where you need to go on an exact day, which is kind of the point for modern cruise ships. However if they can use them for the long haul passages then that at least will get away from the heavy oil that they tend to burn away from shore, although some still burn it close to shore even though they are not meant to.
I cannot see them getting away from having to use motive power of some description to drive props but electric drive does look promising for cruise ships, lots of ways to charge batteries for that.
The other problem with cruise ships is the local environmental impact of dropping that number of tourists at once on a single location, but cutting back mass tourism is a much trickier problem to deal with.
Sailing is hard work on a two-person vessel; World fare be a nominal fee plus n hours of labor? Sign me up!
Sailing is hard work on a two-person vessel;
Why do you say two-person vessel specifically? Are there no automated sail boats on the small scale?
Small scale you don’t really benefit from automation, it’s just more that can go wrong.
I mean, in theory you could equip all the winches with electric motors, but for me it would just take part of the fun away
I don’t know, but would they be cleaner and greener? I specified two-person because that’s the last boat on which I sailed. It was a long time ago.
I just asked because you said it was hard work on a 2 person vessel. I don’t sail so I was just wondering why that would be. Is it labor intensive with moving the sails, or more mentally fatiguing to constantly calculate where to position sails? I’ve not so seriously considered crossing the Altantic (which I heard requires a year of preparation). So to the question as to whether an automated sailboat for two would be greener, I would say /yes/ to the extent that it might encourage more people to sail.
To me, the mental part is easy, but I suppose it would depend on how familiar one is with the winds and tides. It is extremely labor intensive.
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
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Done. Now what?
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
Why not?
Super rich people should use submarines instead Edit: As a more serious answer, the resources and human labor needed t build and maintain those massive yachts can be used for better things.
I’d be down for all megayachts being commandeered by the state and held in public trust as free museums. Large luxury sailing vessels ought to be public property, with reservable tickets free to everyone, and crews employed full time and treated well.
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
If the yachts already exist anyway and so the carbon footprint will be the same, it seems better for them to exist here where they put a lot of money into the local economy rather than somewhere else. I suppose that has to be weighted against the potential to discourage future yacht construction…
Let em put their money into the local economies of somalia when first world ports no longer welcome them.
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
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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.
Too bad the ones with the gold (and the megayachts) make the rules.
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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.
I’m surprised I don’t hear more stories about them being targeted by pirates.
Probably not a lot of valuable cargo on board.
The whole thing is valuable cargo
Probably pretty hard to fence a yacht though
Probably a lot of very nice and expensive things on a yacht though
For sure but probably also security personnel, alarms, quick response by law enforcement, etc.
Well not in the middle of the ocean … 🙂
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…
