A quick follow up on my previous post. Since research has proven air transport to be up to three times more CO2 efficient than cruise ships, laws have been put into place.
“The 2006 law requires cruise ships to meet tougher pollution standards and puts new taxes, fees and environmental monitoring on the industry. It also bans cruise lines from applying for state permission to use mixing zones. Mixing zones allow cruise lines to discharge pollution that exceed the state’s water-quality standards. The mixing ban for cruise lines goes into effect in 2009.”
While this still doesn’t stop cruise lines from discharging pollution entirely it shows awareness about the problem and they are starting to try and cap the problem. There will never be a completely efficient cruise line, and in won’t just stop going on these vacations. Placing environmental laws on these massive polluting floating cities is a start. My next question is how severe are the fines. As I’ve previously stated these cruise lines pay what seem to be large fines, however since they are massive companies the fines are next to nothing when they are actually 'severe'.
The top fine that I could find was $23.5 million to the Royal Viking sun cruise line for getting stuck on the coral reef at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba back in 1996. Other than that the only other major fines were around the $18 million mark. These were because the company got caught for multiple infractions over a period of a couple years and received a massive fine for it. Besides that the next biggest set of fines are around a million dollars, however most of them are still very minimal hovering around hundred thousand dollars or less. The most shocking thing I found is the amount of warnings issued or fines under a thousand for oil discharges. Most of these however are fines from the early 90’s up to about 05. Since new laws have been implemented most of the new charges are for wastewater violations or air pollution. The fine amounts are still pending for most of the recent violations (2009 and on). If you look at past violations of the same type they never exceed the million-dollar mark.
As cruises becoming increasing popular these cruise lines are making a lot more money. They are making bigger ships and dumping more garbage and wastewater into the ocean unnoticed. The only way to fix this problem is with an economic approach. By making the fines much more substantial it would balance out the risk factor, which at the moment is severely tilled on one side, favoring the cruise industry.
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