Month: April 2023

Giant Cruise Ships Bad For Environment

By Joe Guzzardi

The cruise ship industry puts out beguiling advertisements intended to attract more customers on board. Showing couples in summer wear, sipping cocktails and looking out over the ocean to watch the setting sun as they sail off to a distant, romantic destination, ads appear everywhere, from television, social media and movie previews to subway cars.

A closer look at the cruise ship business and its harmful effects on the ecosystem paint a far grimmer picture than advertisements convey. Hakai Magazine, an online publication that focuses on science and society in coastal regions, created the route of the Oceanic Topaz, a fictional but representative cruise ship, on a seven-day journey from Seattle to Alaska. The weeklong trip stopped at various ports like Juneau, Ketchikan and Victoria, before returning to Seattle.

This year, an estimated 700,000 passengers will depart Seattle on hundreds of different cruises. Travelers’ voyages are on increasingly massive ships that house, feed and process the waste of upward of 4,000 passengers. From 2015 until today, the average weight of a major line’s new cruise ship was 164,000 gross tons — more than twice the size of a ship built during the 1990s. The Symphony of the Seas weighs a staggering 228,081 gross tons.

Touted as inexpensive, all-inclusive vacations, Pacific Northwest cruises deliver thousands of people to the glaciers, fjords and small towns of southeast Alaska. Cruises are an integral part of the Pacific Northwest’s tourism economy, but they bring with them significant environmental degradation and deleterious human consequences. Carbon emissions, wastewater discharges, engine and propeller noise, mountains of trash and an unmanageable tourist influx have had a damaging cumulative impact on the ecosystems of tiny communities. As they move from stop-to-stop, the massive vessels disrupt fish, whales and birds; while docked, residents.

This tourism season, 13 ships will make 291 trips between Seattle and Alaska; the imaginary Oceanic Topaz will begin its journey in Seattle which derives significant economic benefits from cruise passengers. In 2022, cruise tourists spend around $900 million in the greater Seattle area, income that supports about 5,500 jobs. That’s the good news. On the other hand, as an Alaska-bound ship sets sail, its 3,600 passengers go about their daily business of flushing toilets, showering and brushing teeth. Each passenger will produce a daily average of 7 gallons of sewage — also known as black water — and about 66 gallons of wastewater from showers, pools, laundry and other non-sewage runoff known as gray water. For a ship carrying 3,600 people, that amounts to about 400 eight-person hot tubs worth of sewage and over 3,000 hot tubs worth of gray water each day.

A grand ship voyage with dramatic views and promised nonstop fun on board is hard for tourists to resist. But add together the carbon emissions, wastewater pollution, noise impacts, trash, thousands of tourists and the impact on wildlife, and the negative effect of cruising is overwhelming.

The argument for economic gains for small communities is understandable and persuasive. But as the Oceanic Topaz example shows, the regions that host these mammoth floating hotels also have a lot to lose. In 2019, in Victoria, where cruise ships have the option to offload accumulated garbage rather than return it to their home port of Seattle, the equivalent of 100 fully loaded garbage trucks were dumped in the region’s Hartland Landfill.

Pre-COVID, the cruise industry’s aggregate revenue hit $27 billion. The U.S., with its long coastlines and easy access to Caribbean ports, leads the world in cruise revenue. By 2026, cruise revenue is expected to reach $35 billion.

Cruise lines have a powerful presence in Washington, D.C. Unlike U.S. airlines and hotels, cruise lines did not benefit from generous government subsidies since they are not registered in the U.S., and therefore American laws do not entirely bind them. Consequently, lobbying by cruise lines spiked from the average $3.5 million between 2009 and 2019 to $4.4 million in 2020 and $5.3 million in 2021. The objective: to get those floating hotels back on the water after the sharp COVID-19-related decline.

An all-out ban on cruise ships is unrealistic, but daily limits at ports-of-call make sense. Based in part on a 2022 commissioned study that the Juneau Assembly requested and in which 74 percent of residents supported limits, the final approval urged a five-ship limit. But such an obvious idea to at least reduce the adverse outcome for residents and the ecosystem has little chance against Big Money interests.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Find his immigration pieces at Immigration News on Substack.

Giant Cruise Ships Bad For Environment

Mickey Mantle’s Regrets

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1994, a year before his death from alcohol-induced cirrhosis, hepatitis C and inoperable liver cancer, Mickey Mantle gave a remorseful interview to Sports Illustrated. The New York Yankees superstar center fielder and first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee recounted his life as an alcoholic with brutal candor. Mantle admitted that because of alcohol abuse, he ended up “killing himself.”

Except to other alcoholics, Mantle’s confession about how drinking kept him from living a more fulfilling life and ruptured his relationships with friends and family doesn’t square with baseball diamond fame. Mantle began some of his mornings with what he called the “breakfast of champions,” a big glass filled with a shot or more of brandy, some Kahlúa and cream. Yankees’ second baseman Billy Martin, a regular drinking partner, and Mantle would stop at Mickey’s Central Park South restaurant where the bartender blended the ingredients and served them up. As Mickey remembered, the frozen drinks “tasted real good.”

Mantle’s “breakfast of champions” was the first of many drinks he threw back each day. Inevitably, Mickey’s heavy drinking led to long blackout periods. By his own admission, Mantle would forget what day it was, what city he was in and about his commitments to appear at baseball card signing shows, although he eventually showed up. The best man at Martin’s 1988 wedding, Mantle “hardly remember(ed) being there.” One year later, Mantle served as a pallbearer at Martin’s funeral. Billy had been killed in a single vehicle automobile accident on Christmas Day. Although there is some dispute about whether Martin or his friend Bill Reedy drove, no one questions that the pair had been drinking heavily in the hours before the fatal crash.

After Mantle retired, his drinking became, in his words, “really bad.” He went through a deep depression. Teammates Billy, Whitey Ford, Hank Bauer and Moose Skowron were part of his past life, and leaving those guys “left a hole in me.” Mantle tried to fill up his baseball emptiness with nonstop alcohol intake.

The older Mantle got, the more he drank. Family and friends begged Mantle to get help. But Mantle stubbornly refused. Like too many alcoholics, Mantle foolishly convinced himself that he could stop whenever he wanted. But at a charity golf outing for the Harbor Club Children’s Christmas Fund near Atlanta, Mantle hit bottom. He drank Bloody Marys in the morning, and then downed two bottles of wine in the afternoon. At the card show that evening, Mantle embarrassed himself with his obnoxious, drunken behavior. In his alcohol-fueled stupors, Mantle often berated autograph seekers, a shock to his fans who cherished his image as a homey, blond-hair, crewcut Oklahoma kid.

Atlanta was an overdue awakening for Mantle. Finally seeking guidance, Mantle approached his son Danny who had been treated at the Betty Ford Center. Three of Mantle’s four sons and his wife Merlyn were also alcoholics. While Mantle deliberated about checking into the Betty Ford Center, his doctor gave him his MRI results: Mickey needed a liver transplant.

Once at Betty Ford, Mantle confronted his uncomfortable truth. Mantle admitted that, as he told Sports Illustrated, “he really screwed up,” was a lousy family man, and preferred running around with his baseball buddies. Envisioning his life as a sober, responsible Mantle, Mickey had big plans, but did not live long enough to realize them to the fullest. His goal was to stay sober, be strong and make amends. At his final press conference, Mantle said to an audience aghast at his wasted-away body: “This is a role model: Don’t be like me.”

Today, Mantle is remembered mostly for his brilliant baseball achievements: 20 All-Star games, three AL MVP awards including one in his 1956 Triple Crown season, seven World Series championship rings, four AL Home Run crowns, and a first ballot Hall of Fame inductee.

But for the millions of Americans suffering from alcoholism, Mantle’s ability to overcome – although too late to save his life – is a bigger triumph than any of his baseball feats. For more information, go to the National Alcohol Awareness Month website here.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. You can also read his content here. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Mickey Mantle’s Regrets Mickey Mantle’s Regrets