> The other is a commercial shipping company through which a large portion of the world's goods is transported.

What's disingenuous is acting as if that statement matters at all when talking about large pollution sources. You're saying the ends justifies the means. I don't think most people would agree. Maybe we should let out all of the bank robbers who were robbing to get money in order to eat and survive, vs those who did it to buy nice cars and enrich themselves or something.

>You're saying the ends justifies the means. I don't think most people would agree.

The ends do justify the means. You don't think shipping food is more important than shipping cheap plastic toys from China? What an odd view.

>Maybe we should let out all of the bank robbers who were robbing to get money in order to eat and survive

I guess it might be news to you, but personal circumstances definitely are taken into account during sentencing in any nation state worth its salt.

> What's disingenuous is acting as if that statement matters at all when talking about large pollution sources.

Of course it does. People have choice when it comes to picking leisure activities.

Do you have choice when it comes to how stuff you buy is transported to you?

You can absolutely choose regional food over exotic imports. Sure, it gets harder to avoid imports when buying electronics, but that's a much smaller scale than food.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but American manufacturing has been decimated over the past several decades. Most stuff you buy these days is manufactured overseas and shipped to North America for assembly and/or sale.

What you seem to be advocating for is an almost complete cessation in consuming stuff, which is impossible to do without a big hit to one's standard of living.

Compared to all this, choosing a leisure activity that is fun, relaxing, and doesn't devastate the environment should be pretty fucking easy.

American manufacturing jobs have been decimated. American manufacturing is at or near historical highs in terms of actual output and value. America simply doesn't do much low-margin, low-end stuff anymore.

To use steel as an example, America still produces a HUGE amount of steel. But most is now specialty alloys (which requires more precision, control and ingredient purity) rather than bulk mild steel.

> Do you have choice when it comes to how stuff you buy is transported to you?

You can definitely choose how stuff is transported to you. One example is to purchase more locally sourced / produced goods.

Which is more damaging environmentally than shipped goods due to sheer efficiency of scale.

You could buy less, and more local, stuff.

> cultureless baby boomers

That's not fair. There's a lot more people on cruises than just baby boomers.

That doesn't change the substance of his objection, which is that leisure activities should quite obviously be held to a greater standard than general freight shipping. For instance, it's obvious that the environmental impact of backyard bonfires should be compared to the environmental impact of a comparable alternative activity, like a backyard charcoal BBQ. If you compared a backyard bonfire to controlled burns for forest management, then obviously the particulate emissions of the bonfire are going to seem inconsequential, because that's an inappropriate comparison.

Whether they're enjoyed by baby boomers or baby zoomers, the environmental impact of leisure cruises should plainly be compared to comparable leisure activities. If we compare flying to a tropical beach instead of taking a cruise ship to that same beach, how do the emissions stack up? My impression is that commercial airliners are substantially more efficient on a per passenger basis.

"If we compare flying to a tropical beach instead of taking a cruise ship to that same beach, how do the emissions stack up?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...:

"Domestic, short distance, less than 463 km (250 nmi): 257 g/km CO2 or 259 g/km (14.7 oz/mile) CO2e, Domestic, long distance, greater than 463 km (250 nmi): 177 g/km CO2 or 178 g/km (10.1 oz/mile) CO2e, Long distance flights: 113 g/km CO2 or 114 g/km (6.5 oz/mile) CO2e"

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green:

"Climate Care, carbon offsetting company

"“According to our calculations, a cruiseliner such as Queen Mary 2 emits 0.43kg of CO2 per passenger mile, compared with 0.257kg for a long-haul flight (even allowing for the further damage of emissions being produced in the upper atmosphere).”"

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ask-mr-green/which-better-...:

"The Queen Mary 2, for example, gets about 20.5 miles per gallon per passenger when traveling at its full speed (though at lower speeds it is considerably more efficient, getting around 45 passenger miles per gallon per passenger). An Airbus A380, in comparison, gets 74 miles per gallon per passenger; the Boeing 737 Max8 gets 110 miles per gallon per passenger."

https://grist.org/living/you-thought-planes-burned-a-lot-of-...:

"All that adds up to 0.40 kilograms of carbon being emitted per passenger per kilometer on your typical cruise ship, according to a 2008 study.

"The latest numbers from the EPA have it that air travel costs you (carboniferously speaking) between 0.17 and 0.25 kg of carbon per passenger mile. By my calculations, that is between 0.11 and 0.16 kg per passenger-kilometer, if we want to align this factoid with the cruise-ship stat above."

The bottom line? The people who report these numbers seem to have a problem between miles and kilometers. I'm guessing about a factor of 2 in favor of flying.

The assumption that baby boomers are "cultureless" or otherwise defective seems a bit suspect as well. Kind of what you would expect from useless lay-about millennials, though.