ARKOS
Ecosystem Restoration Ships
Ecosystem Restoration Ships
A Trim Tab Proposal: Ark for Humanity, and Ecosystem Restoration Ships
As a global pandemic turns the world upside-down, disassembling lives, livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems, we need restoration. No matter where or what sector you find yourself at this moment, the questions on all our minds, what next? Where do we go from here? What's left behind, and what do we bring with us into the future?
Perhaps the hardest hit sector of our pre-COVID-19 world has been the travel industry, and no harder hit than the cruise industry.
Indeed, many cruise ship companies are on the brink of bankruptcy, and restoring this sector to its former self is unlikely, if not impossible for the foreseeable future.
The big idea!
Bucky Fuller's concept of a "trim tab" has always interested me. With these questions and Bucky's concept in mind, I'm reimagining the cruise ship industry all but headed the way of the dinosaur in the wake of this pandemic.
As thousands of cruise ships sit moored and empty, no tourists living and traveling in tight quarters; these are floating ghost ships and symbols of the pandemic.
An image eerily reminiscent of the Titanic.
Does this raise questions of how the industry will rebound from this stigma, and repurpose their valuable assets? I believe it does.
Time to make an ark for humanity
The cruise ship of the future should be an Ark for Humanity and an Ecosystem Restoration Ship.
ARKOS
An ark for humanity restores and regenerates food systems for social and economic stability.
ARKOS would travel to hard-hit communities worldwide. Provide education, design concepts, and implementation of regenerative food systems to create food security and economic stability for a future that imagines thriving, self-sufficient, localized economies.
Restoration ships that would carry a diverse crew of permaculturists, regenerators (regenerative agriculturists) to travel to an area for extended periods, somewhat like AmeriCorps or similarly successful models of social and environmental service.
Onboard the ark
Each ship will have...
A closed-loop system based on a long-term port of call.
Desalination of ocean water for drinking water.
EcoMachine for purification of toilets and grey water.
Hydroponic food and fish production.
Greenhouse.
Long term ports of call six months to a year where the team goes to
local port cities to develop food forest and local cottage industries.
Financing
This project would get financing from bankrupt cruise ship companies, private and public investment, and crypto currency platforms such as:
ARK HOLO STEEMIT
Call me Trim tab –Buckminster Fuller
“...The whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing on the edge of the rudder called a trim tab, it’s a miniature rudder. Just moving that little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. It takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole ship of state is going to turn around. So I said, ‘Call me Trim Tab.’
“We are all trimtab” –Jeff Bridges
The Research:
What happens when cruise ships retire
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cruise-ships-retire/index.html
“The World’s Cruise Ships Can’t Sail. Now, What to Do With Them?”
Will the Coronavirus Bankrupt Carnival Corp.?
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/04/16/will-the-coronavirus-bankrupt-carnival- corp.aspx
Can Carnival Cruise Past Bankruptcy?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2020/04/21/is-carnival-cruising-into- bankruptcy/#b96385e775fb
Carnival’s struggle to survive the coronavirus as outbreak wipes out the cruise industry https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/05/carnivals-struggle-to-survive-the-coronavirus-as- outbreak-wipes-out-the-cruise-industry.html
Is the cruise industry finally out of its depth?
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/apr/19/is-the-cruise-industry-finally-out-of- its-depth
‘Instead of Coronavirus, the Hunger Will Kill Us.’ A Global Food Crisis Looms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/world/africa/coronavirus-hunger-crisis.html
Coronavirus pandemic 'will cause famine of biblical proportions'
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/21/coronavirus- pandemic-will-cause-famine-of-biblical-proportions
The eerie, dystopian opulence of cruise ships Capitalism on sea
https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/the-eerie-dystopian- opulence-of-cruise-ships/
I Have No Desire to Board a Floating Death Trap
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/cruise-bookings-spike-after-carnival- announces-reopening.html
The cruise ship industry is sinking. I’m OK with that.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-08/column-coronavirus-cruise-ships
Cruise ship tourism appears grounded
http://www.islandinstitute.org/working-waterfront/cruise-ship-tourism-appears- grounded