Cruise ships: ‘Reduced sailings or none at all’

You’re on the right course, Seattle Times Editorial Board. Thank you for your timely and courageous call: “Require cruise ships to plug into shore power while docked in Seattle” [Opinion, April 2.] Keep in mind though that shore power only replaces engine exhaust for seven hours during the ship’s seven-day trip to Alaska and back.

Seattle’s seven-month Alaska cruise season delivers an outsize contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Taken together, the ships and passengers’ flights in and out of Sea-Tac airport produce the equivalent of one-third of the whole city’s GHG pollution emitted in an entire year. Moreover, cruise ships dump billions of gallons of toxic waste into our waters, drown out marine mammals’ echolocation with their engine noise, underpay onboard workers and overwhelm destination communities.

If you really want to protect our air and waters from cruise ship pollution and harms, call for reduced sailings or none at all.

Peggy J. Printz, Seattle