“Each passenger’s carbon footprint while cruising is roughly three times what it would be on land.”
In 1996, the late essayist David Foster Wallace described his excursion on a cruise liner as a “special mix of servility and condescension.” He exhaustively journaled every event, person, and feeling during a seven-night, all-inclusive voyage. In “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” he found it insulting that in the name of pampered luxury you are told what to eat, what will entertain you, what will relax you. No matter how many unlimited shrimp and lobster buffets, Wallace found the repetition so banal as to be infuriating.
When a ship docks for a few hours, cruise lines give passengers suggestions of what to do with their time before returning to the boat. But instead of offering sincere recommendations, cruise lines employ a certain pay-to-play model in which vendors on the island can pay to be recommended.
By registering their companies in foreign countries, cruise lines are able to dodge not only corporate income and property taxes but also labor, environmental and insurance laws. Carnival earns $3 billion yearly and pays zero income tax because they are registered in Panama. For Carnival, Panamanian minimum wage laws cost it from $1.22 to $2.36 per hour, high by industry standards…