APOLLONIA-Trailblazing or Tokenism?
APOLLONIA passing the Statue of Liberty
You may have recently heard about a 64ft (steel!) Schooner called the APOLLONIA that has begun offering environmentally friendly freight delivery up and down the length of the Hudson River in New York State. I won’t go into too much detail, as its had its fair share of coverage…. It’s been written about in the “New York Times”, covered by “The Voice of America”, featured in the “Australian Newspaper Magazine” and now the most prestigious of all…its been mentioned in SWS! To get the gist of what they are trying to achieve you can watch this short, well produced little video.
What I’m really interested in, is whether a venture such as this is a genuine and worthwhile attempt to make positive change, or just grandstanding and posturing for the publicity that they are no doubt getting. The readers of the New York Times articles saw both sides of the argument but in the main, were not complimentary, judging from the comments page…
“Yay rich people doing a totally non-scalable thing to make themselves feel better!”
“Self-indulgent, twee and moronic. These people do active damage with their stylish granola nonsense that accomplishes nothing.”
“I foresee many paper straw greenies will now justify their overseas air travel extravaganzas with broccoli delivered by schooner. Paleez.” (Ed -Great brand name there!…BROCCOLI BY SCHOONER)
But it wasn’t totally one sided…I liked these…
“It's not silly. You may be right that the human race is doomed to destroy our home, but it's better to go out trying to effect positive change than to throw up our hands in embittered despair. We are also each individually doomed to die, but surely you wouldn't advocate that we live like our lives don't matter.”
“Plenty of annoyed & critical comments, but who would you rather see succeed: Jeff Bezos? or Don Quixote?”
What does the SWS readership think of this venture?… over on this side of the world, are we dreamers, pragmatists, fatalists or as is usually the case, something in between? I’d love to know your thoughts via the comments section below.
If you’re interested in other projects such as this (perhaps with a little more merit) here are a couple of rabbit holes to jump down.