Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
This is how you watch the end of the world — aboard the Crystal Serenity, marinating in luxury.
Sorry, you missed it. But if you had known about it — I don’t know why you didn’t get the memo — and if you had $120,000 lying around ($22,000 for steerage) you could have joined 1,000-plus passengers served by 700 crew on the first luxury cruise from Seward, Alaska to New York City via the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. Once solid ice, the Northwest Passage became navigable in theory in 2007 because of climate change.
According to the brochure, the good ship Crystal Serenity is “an abomination—a massive, diesel-burning, waste-dumping, ice-destroying, golf-ball-smacking middle finger to what remains of the planet, courtesy of precisely 1,089 of its richest and most destructive inhabitants. And it’s all made possible by runaway climate change, the existential global crisis that these same people and their ilk have disproportionately helped to create.”
Oh, wait, I’m sorry, that’s not the brochure, that’s a report on the cruise from Slate.com written by Will Oremus. Damn, I wish I had said that.
What the brochure says is that this is “the ultimate expedition for the true explorer.” And that is certainly the case. Not many Arctic expeditions of the past have been conducted by people sleeping in luxurious suites, with access to “a spa, a fitness center, a hair salon, multiple swimming pools, six restaurants, a movie theater, a casino, a driving range” and a selection of “luxury shops”. Only a “true explorer” would endure such limited access to gyms, restaurants and luxury shops in order to participate in an “historic voyage, one that marks the opening of one of Earth’s last frontiers.”
That these true explorers are intrepid is self-evident. Because there is, you know, a teensy bit of ice left in the Arctic Ocean, some of it in the form of bergs. They were required to take out a $50,000 emergency-evacuation insurance policy in order to board their expeditionary vessel. The policy has a one-year money-back guarantee. If rescuers don’t get to the ship within one year, your heirs don’t have to pay.
And if that were not enough of a reminder of the danger they are in, they cannot ignore the fact that they are being escorted by an icebreaker. It took “three years of planning and preparation,” gushed Business Times about this major advance in global gluttony, “to avoid any mishaps, including a repeat of the Titanic.” Yeah. That’s a quote.
Yes, if only you hadn’t missed it, you too could have helped open this last frontier by being among the first few thousand people to defecate in some of the last pristine water on the planet. You could have taken a comfortable helicopter tour to watch the last polar bear drown. Or set a personal best by watching Batman v Superman north of the Arctic Circle.
“Not everyone is hailing the high profile voyage,” marvels Business Times. It’s not like Crystal Cruises is insensitive to the environment: they have assured everyone that they will not dump their sewage within 12 miles of land. (They were one of four cruise lines that drew special criticism in a 2014 Friends of Earth study that estimated that cruise ships dump a billion gallons of sewage into the world’s oceans every year.)
Still, the tree-huggers are not satisfied. There’s just something about the thought of this 820-foot long, 13-deck high monstrosity ploughing through Arctic waters belching diesel exhaust and gushing sewage for the entertainment of some rich dilettantes that bothers them.
Go figure.
I have no words to express the disgust this endeavor has generated in me.
When Poseidon is done weeping, unimaginable havoc will ensue.
I think one torpedo could’ve done it.
Le’s hope we see a repeat of the Titanic episode.
What should we expect? Since everything is monetized, the last days for our environment are valuable experiences to exploit.
It’s just another example of business as usual.
The ship of fools.
Greetings ~
The poem below represents a fairly optimistic exercise in futurology on my part, one that refuses to abandon faith in the indomitable spirit of capitalism. Accordingly it is written in the kind of loopy language that might figure in a Chamber of Commerce brochure, circa 2050.
As Lynn, my partner, will attest, I wrote the piece yesterday, on August 24. This morning, by an odd coincident I downloaded Tom’s post vilifying the Crystal Serenity arctic cruise venture – noting with special interest that Tom quotes another writer who employs tourist brochure language to ridicule this leisure-class extravagance.
Reality, I must admit, is even stranger than poetry.
The Ferry to Murmansk
Once an arctic outpost battered by subzero blizzards
Iqaluit is now a bustling hub of circumpolar commerce,
due mostly to the weekly ferry link with Murmansk,
an affordable odyssey not without its exciting moments,
considering the remnant pack ice off Ellesmere Island,
or those marauding subs, formerly under US registry,
which the pan-arctic naval centre tracks relentlessly.
Likewise that irksome layover scheduled for Spitsbergen
where the coal miners oft succumb to boisterousness
at the glimpse of our lady passengers traipsing down
the gangplank, accompanied though they are by topnotch
Russian ex-servicemen uniformed as ordinary stewards.
Now mostly ice-free, the circumpolar economic zone
offers boundless opportunities for southern investors
to relocate their faltering enterprise to an environment
where radioactivity should be of little concern to those
with robust constitutions. Also, for persons accustomed
to pre-war diets we offer a patented greenhouse design
featuring genetically improved flora guaranteed to rid
the slumping permafrost of toxic metals while providing
plentiful vegetable matter for the discriminating palate.
First to note on the approach to Murmansk are the many
derricks that line the bustling harbour. Next, the dome
of a stave church. Last of all, our quaint customs shed.
As a species we will not be missed.
If anything, a global sigh of relief from the survivors.
The passengers will all have a great story for their grandchildren to be embarrassed or outraged about.
It is a horrible thing to say (then again, read my handle; I’m not exactly a people person), but oh, what perfect schadenfreude were this vulgar monstrosity and all assholes aboard to meet the same fate as _Titanic_.
Homo sapiens. The ultimate invasive species.