Two ideas surfaced at a recent dinner with Portuguese friends:
1. Greta is going on a luxury yacht with an entire entourage.
2. A crew of five people had to fly to New York to sail the boat home, simply because there were no longer room for them on the boat.
This gave me an interesting opportunity to try to take apart these ideas and try to find out how much truth they contains and maybe how they came to be.
I think we can say with some certainty that Greta is going on a racing boat called Malizia II with her father and a crew of three (a total of five). Regarding the level of luxury (1), there is a ample evidence that the boats designers equipped it with little in the form of luxury. The boat was constructed for racing and a google image search confirmed that the boat is an empty hull made to go as fast as possible with the crew resting in sleeping bags. The Malizia II was built according to a set of rules called IMOCA 60.
The first problem with (2) above would be that there would be little room or need for five crew members to make up for Greta and her father. Only if the rest of the boats crew were to stay in the US would there be a need for that many. Associated Press reported that two people will fly and that their flying will be offset by funding carbon sequestering projects elsewhere. Associated Press seems to be a dependable news source.
I think we can say with some certainty that Greta is going on a racing boat called Malizia II with her father and a crew of three (a total of five). Regarding the level of luxury (1), there is a ample evidence that the boats designers equipped it with little in the form of luxury. The boat was constructed for racing and a google image search confirmed that the boat is an empty hull made to go as fast as possible with the crew resting in sleeping bags. The Malizia II was built according to a set of rules called IMOCA 60.
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| The interior of the boat |
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| The interior of the boat |
The first problem with (2) above would be that there would be little room or need for five crew members to make up for Greta and her father. Only if the rest of the boats crew were to stay in the US would there be a need for that many. Associated Press reported that two people will fly and that their flying will be offset by funding carbon sequestering projects elsewhere. Associated Press seems to be a dependable news source.
The first idea expressed (1) is clearly false. I think that deliberate spread of false news is not the only thing to blame. I think that perhaps the word "yacht" summons images of russian oligarch and their five stories tall boats in some people's heads.
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| Allegedly the yacht of some russian oligarch |
Greta most probably did not take the place of someone with few options from an economical standpoint. An example of the opposite can be found in the biofuels industry. When sugar cane is grown for biofuel near rainforests, land that is already used for agriculture is used and no rainforest is claimed. However, the problem is often that the lucrative biofuel production push out local farmers who might have little choice but to burn new land in the rain forests (as is happening right now). On the contrary, the crew member whose place Greta might have taken has the same options as she, I and most people in the developed world.
All things considered, her actions has no bearing on whether climate change is caused by humans or not. This is where most of her critics go wrong. They assume that since she might not be able to do what she does without any carbon dioxide emission does not mean all actions are useless. She has probably done what *she* can do for the environment, much more than most.
Here you can actually see where the boat is on the ocean if you are interested.
