Cruise passengers disembarking at five Norwegian ports this month are being met with posters that make it clear their presence is far from welcome.
Anti-cruise grassroots campaign group CruiseNOTWelcome has put up 1,000 posters at ports in Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Tronfheim and Flåm in an attempt to raise awareness of the environmental and social damage it claims is caused by the cruise industry.
One of the posters, spotted by Twitter user Ketan Joshi, states: “You have just arrived in my home town on a floating block of flats that burn asphalt for propulsion and energy. The ship is registered in some bandit state or in an offshore secondary register to exempt them from all our laws about tax, environmental protection and workers rights [sic].
“You paid for your trip to a company that does not pay taxes to Norway or at all, and the workers are exempt from all relevant labour laws.
“Please go back to your boat and tell all on board that you are parasites. You are NOT welcome in Norway!”
Another reads: “CRUISE? Just don’t!” before outlining some statistics relating to emissions from cruise ships and other issues with the industry.
CruiseNOTWelcome seeks to draw attention to the detrimental environmental impacts of the cruise industry, from carbon and other emissions, to the dumping of grey water and rubbish overboard.
Its founder, Bengt Erik Waldow, said: “The industry is doomed because the whole concept of moving a floating town from port to port can never be CO2-efficient no matter what fuel they use.”
CruiseNOTWelcome also alleges that there are poor working conditions on board ships, a failure by cruise companies to pay sufficient taxes, and complains of the detrimental effect that cruise passengers have on the places they visit, given that they add little to the local economy while causing congestion.
Waldow said: “Cruise ships are a particularly big problem in Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand and Flåm and Geiranger, where the town centre is flooded with tourists when they arrive.”
In September 2021, a review led by the University of Exeter of over 200 research papers recommended global legislation to limit the negative impacts of the cruise industry on the world’s oceans and human health.
Research suggests that a large cruise ship can have a carbon footprint greater than 12,000 cars.
Professor Lora Fleming, an author of the review, said in a statement: “Cruise tourism was rapidly expanding pre-Covid-19, and our research shows…
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