1 September 2024
The cruise industry claims climate activists are becoming increasingly intimidating, with management plans now in place at Auckland’s downtown port amid fears someone could get hurt. Amelia Wade reports.
Dragging their wheeled suitcases after disembarking the giant ship behind them, the cruisers are welcomed to Auckland by protesters covered in fake blood and screaming that their holiday kills people.
And at the cruise industry’s conference, held at Auckland’s five-star Cordis hotel, a young and totally limp protester is dragged across the carpet by security while another wrestles with a guard to keep her wailing megaphone.
“Think of the children. Think of your grandchildren,” one screams.
Both now increasingly common scenes as climate campaigners clash with the cruise industry.
There are growing concerns someone – a passenger, worker or protester – is going to get hurt.
“Just within the last couple of months we’ve noticed a lot more intimidation from the protests. It’s in two ways, the sound and the volume of sound from the megaphones and the chants… But also a bit more intimidation – stand-over tactics if you like – for staff that work around the port area,” said the chief executive of the New Zealand Cruise Association, Jacqui Lloyd.
Climate Liberation Aotearoa disagrees.
“No, that’s not true at all. We are staging protest action and those actions can be confronting,” said spokesperson James Cockle.
“These big companies are polluting our environment, they’re trashing our waterways, they’re trashing our atmosphere and are getting away with it.”
Climate Liberation is the activist group formerly known as Restore Passenger Rail which became infamous for stunts like protesters super-gluing themselves to Wellington’s motorways.
This year they re-branded and switched their focus to cruise ships.
“We can’t keep going with this kind of consumption, which really is a luxury. It’s something none of us need,” Cockle said.
Cruise liners are a large part of Aotearoa’s tourism industry; about 100 visit annually and in the 2019/2020 season (the last season that Statistics New Zealand has data for) cruises contributed $547 million to the economy.
But they are big polluters.
As the city was preparing to welcome back cruise ships after the pandemic, Auckland University senior transport lecturer Dr Timothy Welch wrote that individual cruise liners emit more CO2 than any other kind of ship. And per passenger mile, they produce at least twice the CO2 emissions of a long-haul flight.
Their huge engines could produce the same daily emissions of particulate matter – which is linked to harms like asthma and heart disease – as a million cars.
Cruise ships are also allowed to dump billions of litres of untreated sewage and heavily contaminated grey water into the oceans each year.
Protesters are demanding cruise ships be banned from sensitive natural environments like Fiordland. They also want the industry’s emissions to be included in councils’ and the Government’s emissions targets and reduction plans.
Lloyd said the latter was already happening. In May, both the local and international cruise associations submitted support to the Climate Change Commission to include international shipping and aviation emissions in New Zealand’s 2050 targets.
Cockle didn’t know they’d done that.
“Well that’s a really good start but we want them to go further.”
All the cruise liners had signed up to be net zero emissions by 2050 and the industry’s national strategy had a target of reducing its tourism emissions to net zero by 2040 and zero waste by 2030, said Lloyd.
Collectively the industry had invested more than $26 billion in new technologies and newer ships had the ability to take future fuels when they became available, she said. And cruise liners made up 1% of global shipping traffic.
Cockle claimed the industry was green-washing.
“We think it’s magical thinking that they’re using. We think they’re really just kicking the can down the road.”
Both Lloyd and Cockle told the Sunday Star Times they wanted to sit down and have a discussion, and both sides claimed the other wasn’t being constructive.
Activists are able to get closer to cruisers in Auckland to make their demands because the port is public land – an unusual feature both domestically and internationally.
ID Tours organises sight-seeing ventures for passengers and has become increasingly frustrated with the protesters.
Executive director Debbie Summers raised it at a Auckland city centre advisory panel workshop this week, warning her colleagues the intense protests could spread to other industries.
Travel agents offering cruises have also been targeted, and activists interrupted a Viking Cruise information evening in Christchurch.
One protester stood up and said: “Do you know how many people are going to be killed as a result of your fossil fuel-burning ship in 2023? Because the answer is 41 people are gong to be killed because of it.”
The protesters got wrestled out of the room. A social media video shows one being held up against a wall by a man at the event and another putting his hand over an activist’s mouth. In the same video, that protester claims that a man said to him: “I’m going to cause you so much pain.”
Summers told the Auckland CBD meeting that the protesters refused to engage with the industry constructively.
“Their MO is not to learn, their MO is not to engage … their MO is to disrupt.”
Summers said she was not against protests or the right to free speech but she also had the right to object when protest was used to instigate violence and aggression, and she was concerned for the safety of her team.
She contacted 37 affiliate companies around the world to see whether they were also seeing a rise in activism. None had seen it as intense as New Zealand.
A contact in the UK said following the Just Stop Oil protests there, which caused disruption with protesters glueing themselves to roads and concreting their hands to trains, the British government brought in a law to make it a criminal offence to interfere in that way and many are now being sent to prison.
“It was horrid to see the way your team are being intimidated whilst simply doing their job.”
A response from France said their authorities had been more proactive in balancing the right to protest with maintaining port operations.
“For instance, local authorities typically implement stricter security protocols during cruise ship arrivals and departures to prevent direct disruption.”
The port isn’t yet at the point of extending the customs zone to allow passengers to disembark because it was conscious that Princes and Queens wharves were public spaces for Aucklanders to enjoy.
“We’re just watching and waiting and will adjust our plans as need be,” said Ports of Auckland spokesperson Julie Wagener.
But there are management plans, including calling the police when it looked like someone’s safety could be compromised.
“One thing we have noticed though is as soon as you call the police, they disperse very quickly. Though unfortunately that does take police away from the job they should be doing, which is looking after New Zealanders,” said Lloyd.
Lloyd said activists covered in fake blood and shouting into megaphones was confronting for passengers, many of whom were visiting Aotearoa for the first time.
“Any passenger that gets that on their arrival in New Zealand, it certainly puts a sour taste in their mouth.”
The protesters gather for their missions from near and far. When Cockle and company disrupted the cruise conference in Auckland, eight people piled into a big people-mover and drove up from Dunedin and used the Interislander.
When the Star-Times asked whether some activists flew, Cockle said that was the wrong question.
“An individual’s actions are one thing but these giant companies produce a huge amount of emissions and all we need is seismic change here.”