Operating an SY [Superyacht] is expensive and ecologically damaging. On average, an SY over 71 meters/233 feet uses 500 liters/132 gallons of gasoline an hour, and annual fuel costs for an average SY are around $400,000. From available data, we estimated that an average (71 meter) SY uses about 107,000 gallons gasoline/year and produces 2.1 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. Thus, the fleet of 300 SY produces approximately 627 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year. That very large figure needs to be placed in context. To do so, we compare the carbon and gasoline footprint of Sys owned by the wealthy to the average vehicle—a more affordable mode of transportation for the average person operated in the United States.
An average new car gets 25.5 miles per gallon (mpg) in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, an average person drives about 13,476 miles, using 528.5 gallons of gas, and generates 10,358.6 pounds of CO2 pollution annually. Thus, one average SY produces as much CO2 pollution as 202 average cars, and, annually, the SY fleet (N = 300) uses as much gasoline as 60,600 cars that get 25.5 mpg.
Another way to illustrate the annual ecological harm caused by SY is to compare the CO2 emissions from the 300 largest SY to the CO2 emissions of entire nations. The SY fleet carbon emissions (nearly 630 million pounds), for example, is similar to the emissions of the 10.6 million inhabitants of Burundi (654.02 million pounds), and 5.7 times larger than the carbon footprint (111,556,039 pounds) of the small (36,157 inhabitants) developed nation of Liechtenstein. Thus, the carbon footprint of the global SY fleet of the wealthy produces as much ecological disorganization as entire nations of people.
Measuring the Ecological Impact of the Wealthy: Excessive Consumption, Ecological Disorganization, Green Crime, and Justice
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"Marian II"
Initially launched in New York in 1931 and christened Cleopatra, Maid Marian II was renamed by her new owner, socialite Mrs. Ruth Nash Bliss, in 1933 as a nod to her brother’s luxury yacht, Maid Marian.
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Thorstein Veblen, the economist who published “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” in 1899, argued that the power of “conspicuous consumption” sprang not from artful finery but from sheer needlessness. “In order to be reputable,” he wrote, “it must be wasteful.” In the yachting world, stories circulate about exotic deliveries by helicopter or seaplane: Dom Pérignon, bagels from Zabar’s, sex workers, a rare melon from the island of Hokkaido. The industry excels at selling you things that you didn’t know you needed. When you flip through the yachting press, it’s easy to wonder how you’ve gone this long without a personal submarine, or a cryosauna that “blasts you with cold” down to minus one hundred and ten degrees Celsius, or the full menagerie of “exclusive leathers,” such as eel and stingray.
But these shrines to excess capital exist in a conditional state of visibility: they are meant to be unmistakable to a slender stratum of society—and all but unseen by everyone else. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the yachting community was straining to manage its reputation as a gusher of carbon emissions (one well-stocked diesel yacht is estimated to produce as much greenhouse gas as fifteen hundred passenger cars), not to mention the fact that the world of white boats is overwhelmingly white. In a candid aside to a French documentarian, the American yachtsman Bill Duker said, “If the rest of the world learns what it’s like to live on a yacht like this, they’re gonna bring back the guillotine.”
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