Given the context of our governor presenting to the United Nations climate summit and the intensity of cruise ships visiting Portland this week, this seems like a good time to question why we let cruise ships run their engines for hours on end.
In at least some other ports, cruise ships are required to contract for land-based power and have to turn their engines off while in port. Our city seems to have made a different choice to date, and it leaves the local population with a degraded environment. It broke my heart to look at the long brown path of smog stretching from the harbor to Yarmouth from the Eastern Prom yesterday afternoon.
Add in the number of idling buses and jitneys and the spewing of the Narrow Gauge Railroad, and we are being choked up here on the Hill.
Is it really worth it? Are we really willing as a local community to poison the air just to pump a few extra tourist dollars into the economy? Isn’t this the opposite of the direction in which we should be going as a society?
Joe Lewis
Portland
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