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I've been on a few cruises, they're fun and certainly an amazing feat of engineering but a bit of reflection and you realize perhaps moving the equivalent of a self-contained resort from place to place just so that people won't be a bit bored when in-between ports might be a bit egregious in the scheme of things. Do people really need to experience up-scale restaurants, casinos, roller coasters, zip-lines, skating rinks, musicals, comedy shows, etc while at sea? Combine that with the cruise industries' general poor track record of worker mistreatment, at the very least some much heavier regulation seems warranted. I'm guessing eventually cruises will go the way of orca shows in popularity.

The problem with this type of argument is it always circles back. For example, what is the purpose of the 58 year old painters art? Hmmm, it doesn't seem like the painter is serving any purpose.

The crux of the argument is, there is no such thing as an objective purpose. Nothing in the universe has such a property in the final analysis. Thus purpose must be defined by individuals.

Everyone thinks the things they don't personally enjoy or benefit from are the ripest targets for regulation (if not outright elimination). Just like everyone thinks that their (or quite often their parents') choices of where to live and how to get around should be easy for everyone else to adopt. Sometimes those preferences happen to be consistent with environmental or other concerns, but that's rarely the real motivation. People just like to look down on other people. The difference is apparent when you consider that the "activists" have generally not thought for one minute about what it would really take to make their prescription real, or what secondary costs (including environmental ones) that would incur.

The interviewed activist is a painter. I would put painting and cruising in same bucket of utility. And that both have value because they provide happiness.

Not everyone thinks that. Come now. I and many other people can honestly say we never woke up in the morning filled with zeal to ban out regulate someone else's entertainment.

Most people lack a generalised sense of empathy. They can empathise with people who are missing out on things they (the observers) also would want but don't really care if someone is missing something they (the observers) don't care for.

Applies equally well to parks, pets, porn, cars, cycleroutes, childcare...

I’ve never been on a cruise and I don’t ever particularly want to go, but these activists sound like a bunch of miserable bastards who hate fun.

My take away was also bitterness and jealousy, the arguments just don't really add up to banning cruises.

> "I mean, how can we authorize that?”

Wow, she's saying the quiet part out loud. No, we don't need her goddamn permission if we want to ice skate in a boat. That sounds awesome.

Agreed. At what price do you think cruises internalize the externalized costs?

I don’t think we should get rid of cruises, but I don’t see the movie theater comparison as valid. Movie theaters don’t emit tons of CO2. (One could also make the argument that movie theaters propagate the arts, which is a good purpose)

> Movie theaters don’t emit tons of CO2

Perhaps not directly, but in most of the USA, everyone in one drove a car there. The energy use from those same people streaming the movie at home would emit much less.

I'm not for a ban on any of those, but very few activities are truly carbon neutral.

I think it's a matter of scope. Cruise ships are unusually polluting. This is why folks argue to ban private jets and not commercial aviation. Or in this case, cruise and not container ships.

A lot more people get "value" from Fox News vs. HN; ban the latter to save resources and those people can go do some productive with the time they're currently wasting.

Again: That's not a helpful comparison. Cruise ships have absolutely ridiculous emissions. HN does not.

This makes sense to me as an argument. People downvoting this because they disagree is pretty sad.

Everyone drove a car to the theater to sit sedentary for 3+ hours and eat garbage food before driving home. Lots of societal bad there; why do you get to decide?

Things you listed are parts of Murican way of life, not a part of cinema experience. Ppl around the world mostly use bikes or public transit or at least taxi to go to the cinema. In my local cinema they serve nice salads beside traditional pop-corn.

You have to look at the whole picture. The people who drive to the theater emit CO2. Same for car racing. I bet the emissions caused by the race cars are dwarfed by the emissions of people driving to any larger music concert.

Most movie theatres propagate nonsense superhero stories. Lots of CO2 emitted in the creation of those. I guess we should delete movie theatres along with everything else.

The problem with all such arguments as they are fundamentally nihilistic in the final analysis.

If CO2 is the concern then include the CO2 in the price via a CO2 tax (or a per person CO2 budget if you want something objectively worse but more intuitive, then people can save up their CO2 credits for a cruise if they really want a once in a lifetime thing).