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Stormy seas ahead: Why confidence in the cruise industry has plummeted

<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jennifer-holland-969445">Jennifer Holland</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-suffolk-3830">University of Suffolk</a></em></p> <p>The cruise industry has weathered many storms, including fairly regular brushes with disease. Outbreaks of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/pub/norovirus/norovirus.htm">norovirus</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3294517/">H1N1</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/world/americas/measles-scientology-cruise-ship.html">measles</a> have all happened in the not too distant past. Despite this, a cruise has traditionally been regarded as a safe holiday – the kind where you don’t have to worry about a thing.</p> <p>COVID-19 has changed this. Cruise ships were a hotbed of transmission during the early stages of the pandemic, particularly the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined for six weeks in Japan in spring 2020. It had over <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1632">700 confirmed cases</a>, and for a period was the world’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/feb/20/coronavirus-live-updates-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-japan-deaths-latest-news-china-infections?page=with:block-5e4ea39f8f0811db2fafb3ec#block-5e4ea39f8f0811db2fafb3ec">leading COVID-19 hotspot</a> after China. Coverage of this and other ships’ outbreaks has taken its toll.</p> <p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259019822100035X">Research</a> that I conducted with colleagues in Australia shows that the pandemic has changed how people think of cruise holidays. We surveyed over 600 people in the UK and Australia, both cruisers and non-cruisers, to ask them about their willingness to cruise and future travel intentions, to explore how COVID-19 has affected perceptions of travel and cruise risks.</p> <p>Nearly 45% of interviewees had less belief than before the pandemic that cruise lines are transparent and honest about safety or health issues. Respondents were also fearful of going on a cruise, with 47% saying they don’t trust cruise lines to look after them if something goes wrong. This is staggering for an industry that depends on repeat customers.</p> <p>We further found that 67% of people are less willing to cruise as a result of the pandemic, while 69% said they feel less positive about cruising now. What’s most surprising is that even repeat cruisers said they feel nervous about cruising as a result of the pandemic, with this emotion coming up repeatedly in the survey’s open-ended questions. This is a gamechanger. Until now, loyal cruisers have always come back, with previous disease outbreaks having <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261517716300309">little</a> <a href="http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_4_No_7_July_2013/2.pdf">impact</a>.</p> <h2>What went wrong?</h2> <p>When the pandemic began, cruise ships immediately suffered high infection rates among passengers and crew. During the first wave, thousands were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/stranded-at-sea-cruise-ships-around-the-world-are-adrift-as-ports-turn-them-away">stranded onboard</a> ships as they were held in quarantine or <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160738320302103?via%3Dihub">refused entry to ports</a> as borders closed. By the end of April 2020, <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article241640166.html">over 50 cruise ships</a> had confirmed cases of COVID-19 and at least 65 deaths had occurred among passengers and crew.</p> <p>The story of one ship – the Ruby Princess – gained particular attention. Its passengers were allowed to disembark in Sydney in mid-March, with a number carrying the virus. The ship would go on to be linked to more than <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-53802816">900 COVID-19 cases and 28 deaths</a>. The state of New South Wales later launched a <a href="https://www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/assets/dpc-nsw-gov-au/publications/The-Special-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Ruby-Princess-Listing-1628/Report-of-the-Special-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Ruby-Princess.pdf">public inquiry</a> into the ship’s outbreak and found that the state’s ministry of health made a number of serious errors in allowing passengers to get off.</p> <p>It didn’t take long for cruises to be depicted as <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/virus-explosion-in-australia-exposes-cruise-ships-hidden-menace">places of danger and infection</a>, particularly in Australia. Lots of information about COVID-19 on cruise ships was published, especially about the <a href="https://cruiseradio.net/the-cruise-ship-story-mainstream-media-got-wrong/">Ruby Princess</a>, grabbing the <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&amp;q=Ruby%20Princess">public’s attention</a>. Undoubtedly, this amplified people’s perceptions of risk around cruise holidays. Our study found that the many stories on COVID-19 also reminded the public of previous illnesses and outbreaks onboard cruise ships.</p> <p>Given the high intensity of media interest in Australia, we weren’t surprised to find that perceived risks were higher there compared with the UK, with willingness to cruise lower. This suggests that there could be regional differences in how difficult it is for the industry to recover after the pandemic.</p> <h2>What happens next?</h2> <p>Most respondents in the study said they would wait until it was safe to cruise again – and there’s probably a long way to go on changing the current perception of cruise ships as giant incubators of disease. It’s doubtful pent-up demand from loyal cruisers will be enough to fill cruise ships to capacity – which is critical for <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fs41278-020-00158-3">long-term economic viability</a> – and so <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-cruise-industry-really-recover-from-coronavirus-144704">financial uncertainty</a> grows.</p> <p>The pandemic has been <a href="https://cruising.org/-/media/Facts-and-Resources/Cruise-Industry-COVID-19-FAQs_August-13-2020">catastrophic</a> for the industry so far, with financial losses of US$50 billion (£36 billion), 1.17 million job losses, 18 cruise ships sold or scrapped and at least <a href="https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/cmv-becomes-the-third-cruise-line-to-go-out-of-business-in-a-month">three cruise lines stopping trading</a>. Before the pandemic, a new cruise ship was built <a href="https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/news-headlines/golden-age-med-ports-need-prepare-new-generation-large-ships">every 47 days</a>, and off the back of the industry’s robust growth over the past two decades another <a href="https://cruising.org/en-gb/news-and-research/research/2020/december/state-of-the-cruise-industry-outlook-2021">19 ships</a> are due to enter operation in 2021, despite demand very likely to have fallen.</p> <p>To recover, the industry will need to address people’s perceptions of risk, which our research shows have heightened. Risk perception has a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/004728759803700209">significant influence</a> on holiday decision-making, and it will be even more critical post-COVID.</p> <p>In the wake of the pandemic, would-be cruisers will need to think about health protocols, outbreak prevention plans, onboard sanitation procedures, social distancing measures and health screenings. Also, they’ll need to consider the implications of potential outbreaks during the cruise. These could result in being quarantined in their cabin, needing to access healthcare, or even the cruise being terminated.</p> <p>All of this creates uncertainty, which adds to perceptions of risk. The industry will need to provide reassuring answers on all of these points to entice holidaymakers back onboard. Cruise companies will also need to convince customers that they are trustworthy and accountable, given the concerns about honesty and transparency raised by our research.</p> <p>Overall, the sector has been devastated by the pandemic. Possibly no other area of tourism has been as widely affected. A return to the robust growth enjoyed previously is unlikely for many years, if ever. But for there to be any chance of this happening, the industry must understand how the pandemic has affected people’s perceptions of cruises and address their concerns.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152146/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /></p> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jennifer-holland-969445"><em>Jennifer Holland</em></a><em>, Lecturer in Tourism, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-suffolk-3830">University of Suffolk</a></em></p> <p><em>Image credits: Shutterstock </em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/stormy-seas-ahead-confidence-in-the-cruise-industry-has-plummeted-due-to-covid-19-152146">original article</a>.</em></p>

Cruising

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Rough seas or smooth sailing? The cruise industry is booming despite environmental concerns

<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/frederic-dimanche-836528">Frédéric Dimanche</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/toronto-metropolitan-university-1607">Toronto Metropolitan University</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kelley-a-mcclinchey-1287281">Kelley A. McClinchey</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/wilfrid-laurier-university-1817">Wilfrid Laurier University</a></em></p> <p>Cruise ship season is officially underway in British Columbia. The season kicked off with the arrival of Norwegian Bliss on April 3 — the <a href="https://www.cheknews.ca/first-cruise-ship-of-the-season-to-arrive-in-victoria-in-less-than-2-weeks-1196426/">first of 318 ships</a> that are scheduled to dock in Victoria this year. Victoria saw a record 970,000 passengers arrive in 2023, with more expected in 2024.</p> <p>The cruise industry <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2021.100391">was badly hit</a> by the <a href="https://financialpost.com/financial-times/the-2020s-were-meant-to-be-a-boom-decade-for-cruises-then-covid-19-hit-them-like-a-tidal-wave">suspension of cruise operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic</a> in 2020. Fuelled by heavy consumer demand and industry innovation, cruising has made a comeback. It is now one of the fastest-growing sectors, rebounding even faster than international tourism.</p> <p>While many predicted <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/05/carnivals-struggle-to-survive-the-coronavirus-as-outbreak-wipes-out-the-cruise-industry.html">a difficult recovery</a>, a <a href="https://cruising.org/en">recent industry report shows a remarkable post-pandemic rebound</a>. Two million more people went on cruises in 2023 versus 2019, with demand predicted to top 35 million in 2024.</p> <p>But environmental issues plague the sector’s revival. Are they an indication of rough seas ahead? Or will a responsive industry mean smooth sailing?</p> <p>Cruising has long been criticized <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/their-purpose-is-to-be-fun-but-theres-a-dark-side-to-cruising-the-seas/dzxivdoos">for being Janus-faced</a>: on the surface, cruises are convenient, exciting holidays with reputed economic benefits. But lurking underneath are its <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2017.11.002">negative environmental and social impacts</a>.</p> <h2>Unprecedented growth</h2> <p>Newly constructed mega-ships are part of the industry’s unprecedented growth. Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas is the <a href="https://www.cruisehive.com/top-10-biggest-cruise-ships-in-the-world/66448">largest cruise ship in the world</a>, with 18 decks, 5,600 passengers and 2,350 crew.</p> <p>MSC World Europa with 6,700 passengers and 2,100 crew, P&amp;O Arvia with 5,200 passengers and 1,800 crew, and Costa Smeralda with 6,600 passengers and 1,500 crew also claim mega-ship status.</p> <p>Those sailing to and from Alaska via Victoria will be some of the <a href="https://hakaimagazine.com/features/cruise-ship-invasion/">estimated 700,000 passengers departing Seattle</a> on massive ships three sport fields in length.</p> <p>Baby boomers represent less than 25 per cent of cruise clientele. Gen X, <a href="https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2024/01/15/cruise-millennials-gen-z">Millennials and Gen Z</a> have more interest than ever in cruising, with these younger markets being targeted as the future of cruise passengers.</p> <p>The Cruise Lines International Association asserts that <a href="https://cruising.org/-/media/clia-media/research/2024/2024-state-of-the-cruise-industry-report_041424_web.ashx">82 per cent of those who have cruised will cruise again</a>. To entice first-timers and meet the needs of repeat cruisers, companies are offering new itineraries and onboard activities, from <a href="https://www.timescolonist.com/business/royal-caribbean-quantum-cruise-ship-1st-at-sea-bumper-cars-skydiving-observation-capsule-4585987">simulated skydiving and bumper cars</a> to <a href="https://nationalpost.com/travel/cruise-ship-offers-pickleball-on-the-high-seas">pickleball</a> and lawn bowling.</p> <p>Solo cruise travel is also on the rise, and <a href="https://www.cruisetradenews.com/demand-for-multi-generational-cruise-holidays-on-the-up-data-finds/">multi-generational family cruise travel</a> is flourishing, explaining the extensive variety of cabin classes, activities and restaurants available on newly constructed and retrofitted ships.</p> <p>However, only a few cruise ports are large enough to dock mega ships. Cruise lines are responding by offering off-beat experiences and catering more to the distinct desires of travellers.</p> <p>In doing so, there is a <a href="https://www.positivelyosceola.com/2024s-top-cruise-trends-embracing-smaller-ships-solo-adventures-and-luxury-suites/">move towards smaller vessels and luxury liners</a>, river cruises and <a href="https://www.travelweek.ca/news/cruise/expedition-cruising-what-is-it-and-how-do-you-sell-it/">expedition cruising</a>. Leveraging lesser-known ports that can only be accessed via compact luxury ships <a href="https://www.cntraveler.com/story/small-cruise-ships-are-more-sustainble-and-on-the-rise">offers more mission-driven, catered experiences</a> for the eco-minded traveller.</p> <h2>Cruising and environmental costs</h2> <p>Cruise ship visitors are known to negatively impact Marine World Heritage sites. While most sites regulate ballast water and wastewater discharge, there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020611">concerns about ship air emissions and wildlife interactions</a>.</p> <p>Cruise ship journeys along Canada’s west coast, for example, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/09/us-cruise-ships-using-canada-as-toilet-bowl-for-polluted-waste-alaska-british-columbia">are leaving behind a trail of toxic waste</a>. <a href="https://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Comparison_of_CO2_Emissions_v2.pdf">A study by environmental organization Friends of the Earth</a> concluded that a cruise tourist generates eight times more carbon emissions per day than a land tourist in Seattle.</p> <p>Also, a rise in expedition cruising means more negative impacts (long-haul flights to farther ports, less destination management in fragile ecosystems, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/briefing/last-chance-tourism.html">last chance tourism</a>) and a rise in carbon dioxide emissions.</p> <p>Toxic air pollutants from cruise ships around ports are higher than pre-pandemic levels, <a href="https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/europes-luxury-cruise-ships-emit-as-much-toxic-sulphur-as-1bn-cars-study/">leaving Europe’s port cities “choking on air pollution</a>.” Last year, Europe’s 218 cruise ships emitted as much sulphur oxides as one billion cars — a high number, considering the introduction of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30002-4">International Maritime Organization’s sulphur cap in 2020</a>.</p> <h2>Rough seas ahead or smooth sailing?</h2> <p>Royal Caribbean said its Icon of the Seas is designed to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/worlds-largest-cruise-ship-sets-sail-bringing-concerns-about-methane-emissions-2024-01-27/">operate 24 per cent more efficiently than the international standard</a> for new ships. International Maritime Organization regulations <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-22/royal-caribbean-s-icon-of-the-seas-highlights-climate-impact-of-cruises">must be 30 per cent more energy-efficient</a> than those built in 2014.</p> <p>But despite the industry using liquefied natural gas instead of heavy fuel oil and electric shore power to turn off diesel engines when docking, industry critics still claim <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/26/icon-of-the-seas-largest-cruise-ship-human-lasagne-climate-fuel-lng-greenwashing">the cruise sector is greenwashing</a>. As a result, some cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona and Venice are <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/21/war-on-cruise-ships-amsterdam-latest-port-to-limit-or-ban-cruise-liners">limiting or banning cruise ships</a>.</p> <p>Environmental critiques remain strong, especially for <a href="https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ijegeo/issue/65449/957262">polar expeditions</a>. The industry must respond and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01949-4_131">increase sustainability efforts</a>, but their measures remain reactive (i.e., merely meeting international regulations) rather than proactive. In addition, by sailing their ships under <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/13/real-problem-with-cruise-industry/">flags of convenience</a>, cruise companies evade taxes and demonstrate an unwillingness to abide by a nation’s environmental, health and labour regulations.</p> <p>In any case, environmental concerns are escalating along with the industry. <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/cruising-green-eco-operators-make-waves">Travel agents and industry figures are aware of these impacts</a> and should help promote cruise lines that demonstrate a commitment to sustainable practices.</p> <p>Local residents need to expect more from port authorities and local governments in order <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2024.103732">to cope with cruise tourism</a>. Cruise consumers should recognize the environmental costs of cruising, and demand accountability and transparency from cruise lines.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/228181/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /></p> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/frederic-dimanche-836528"><em>Frédéric Dimanche</em></a><em>, Professor and Director, Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/toronto-metropolitan-university-1607">Toronto Metropolitan University</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kelley-a-mcclinchey-1287281">Kelley A. McClinchey</a>, Teaching Faculty, Geography and Environmental Studies, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/wilfrid-laurier-university-1817">Wilfrid Laurier University</a></em></p> <p><em>Image credits: Shutterstock</em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/rough-seas-or-smooth-sailing-the-cruise-industry-is-booming-despite-environmental-concerns-228181">original article</a>.</em></p>

Cruising

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3 sales tactics rife in the real estate industry, and why they work

<p>Buying a home is likely to be the biggest financial transaction you will ever make, and you’re at a distinct disadvantage. You’re an amateur up against professionals – real estate agents – versed in psychological tricks to get you excited about owning a property and paying more than you planned.</p> <p>These tricks start with comparatively simple things such as making rooms look bigger in adverts by using a wide-angle photography. They extend all the way to the point of sale. </p> <p>None of these tactics necessarily involve outright lying – there are laws against false and misleading conduct. But they are manipulative, exploiting the fact that humans are emotional beings with many “cognitive biases” – a perception of reality that is more emotional ratther than rational.</p> <p>The three most common tactics come down to manipulating your confidence in your own decisions. Close to <a href="https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217590816500156">80 studies</a> suggest overconfidence is one of the most significant cognitive biases influencing behaviour in the real estate market.</p> <h2>1. Underquote, entice the bargain hunters</h2> <p>You see a property in your price range that’s everything you want. You call the agent, inspect the property, then prepare for the auction. It sells for $200,000 more. </p> <p>Underquoting involves deliberately advertising a property significantly lower than its likely sales price. While the prevalence of the practice is disputed, with industry representatives saying most agents do the right thing, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/property/news/new-3-8-million-crackdown-on-underquoting-by-victorian-real-estate-agents-20220914-p5bhzq.html">anecdotal evidence</a>points to underquoting being very common. </p> <p>Underquoting is effective because it attracts more interested buyers and increases the number and intensity of bidding. It exploits two of the most ubiquitous cognitive biases – herd behaviour and irrational exuberance. </p> <p>More interest doesn’t just increase competition. A real estate agent will communicate that interest to us, confirming our desire in the property is justified. </p> <p>This tendency to “follow the herd” and imitate others, as US economist Robert Shiller noted in an influential <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2117915">1995 paper</a>, is built on the assumption others have information that justifies their actions. </p> <p>This helps explain pretty much every stockmarket bubble since <a href="https://theconversation.com/tulip-mania-the-classic-story-of-a-dutch-financial-bubble-is-mostly-wrong-91413">tulipmania in the 17th century</a>, including the <a href="https://lsecentralbanking.medium.com/how-did-herd-behaviour-contribute-to-the-global-financial-crisis-3b0024a4755e">Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612318303647">speculation on cryptocurrency</a>. We are emotionally swayed by the decisions of others, assuming their decisions are rational, even when they are not. This is fertile ground for our own decisions to be manipulated.</p> <h2>2. Hide reality, inflate expectations</h2> <p>Real estate agents will generally favour auctions to extract the <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/news/selling-at-auction-in-melbourne-earns-vendors-tens-of-thousands-in-extra-cash-1072565/">maximum sales price</a>, for the reasons outlined above and the prospect of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220505543_Understanding_auction_fever_A_framework_for_emotional_bidding">auction fever</a> – when carefully decided limits are forgotten in the thrill of the moment. </p> <p>But that’s not always the case. In a soft market with few buyers, agents may instead opt for a private sale, sometimes called a “<a href="https://attwoodmarshall.com.au/the-silent-auction/">silent auction</a>”. The goal here is to cause you to overestimate the degree of competition and thus make a bigger offer.</p> <p>An agent might assist this perception by instead supplying you with information from previous public auctions of similar properties more favourable to their preferred narrative.</p> <p>The value of hiding information also explains why you may come across so many sold listings with <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/should-you-be-able-to-know-how-much-your-neighbours-sold-their-house-for-20220223-p59z2t.html">labels</a> such as “price not disclosed” or “price withheld.” The reason for this may well be that the property sold for less than hoped.</p> <p>Hiding information the agent doesn’t want you to think about depends principally on exploiting our cognitive bias towards <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/overconfidence">overconfidence</a> – assuming we are smarter, more knowledgeable or better skilled than we actually are.</p> <p>In lieu of that negative information, you are more likely to focus on the available information – particularly if it suits what you want to believe.</p> <h2>3. Talk up nominal gains</h2> <p>You may have heard the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/do-house-prices-really-double-every-10-years-20211203-p59eif.html">old saying</a> that property values double every 10 years. Stressing what a property is likely to be worth in a decade <a href="https://www.realestate.com.au/news/suburbs-you-shouldve-bought-a-home-in-10-years-ago-and-how-much-your-area-has-grown/">based on what it was worth a decade ago</a> can be a powerful motivator to bid more.</p> <p>As Robert Shiller noted in his 2013 book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691156323/the-subprime-solution">The Subprime Solution</a> (about the property-buying mania that led to the Global Financial Crisis), homes are such significant investments that we tend to recall their prices from the distant past (unlike, say, like a loaf of bread or bottle of milk).</p> <p>This tendency results in an unconscious focus on nominal values rather than <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/04/12/the-illusion-of-housing-as-a-great-investment.aspx">real (inflation-adjusted) values</a>. This cognitive bias is known as the <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/14635789810212931/full/html">money illusion</a>, a mental miscalculation that may increase your willingness to pay more for the property. </p> <h2>In conclusion…</h2> <p>There’s a case for laws to <a href="https://www.realestate.com.au/news/push-to-end-home-sale-price-confusion-in-victorian-property-industry-review/">increase transparency</a> and the accuracy of information available in the real estate market. </p> <p>But in the meantime, if you’re buying a home, it’s wise to acknowledge your limitations. Do your homework, seek out independent advice and even consider hiring a professional advocate with the knowledge and experience to balance emotional and rational thoughts.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-sales-tactics-rife-in-the-real-estate-industry-and-why-they-work-202960" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Real Estate

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The Proclaimers feel shocked at the longevity of their music

<p dir="ltr">The Proclaimers have been surprised by their own longevity, and have far surpassed their own expectations in the music industry. </p> <p dir="ltr">Craig and Charlie Reid formed the group in 1983, and Craig has admitted they have been shocked by their ongoing careers. </p> <p dir="ltr">Craig recently told the BBC, "We've had a much longer run at it than we thought we would, so now we are at 60 we just want to do the best that we can and do it for as long as we can and to keep enjoying it."</p> <p dir="ltr">With the Scottish band currently on tour, they said their classic tunes are as much crowd pleasers now as they were when they were first released in the 1980s. </p> <p dir="ltr">Charlie said, "<em>500 Miles</em>, <em>Letter from America</em>, <em>Let's Get Married</em>, <em>Sunshine on Leith</em>, we always do them at every show.”</p> <p dir="ltr">"The fact that people still want to hear them 30 years later is great for us and I suppose for the audience it connects them with their own past as well. But to do a show without any new songs would not be right because I think as writers we've got better as time's gone on."</p> <p dir="ltr">The Proclaimers' latest album, <em>Dentures Out</em>, is much more political than many of their previous records, with Craig suggesting that Britain is in a state of "terminal decline", which was a huge influence on the new music. </p> <p dir="ltr">He said, "I think Britain has been diminishing in power and reach since World War Two, but I think that in the last 10 years Britain has nose-dived as regards its own self-worth and certainly in regard to its own place in the community of nations."</p> <p dir="ltr">Charlie also admitted that the new album has a strong sense of "nostalgia" about it, and taps into some of their older style of music. </p> <p dir="ltr">He reflected, "For the first time ever there's a constant theme in an album we've done. A lot of it is about nostalgia, about people looking back and perhaps looking back with rose-coloured glasses or not remembering at all."</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Music

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Cancelled flights, disrupted vacations, frayed tempers: FAQs about the chaos in the airline industry

<p>People around the world are anxious to travel again as pandemic restrictions are being lifted. But those planning to jump on a plane for a vacation have been frustrated by chaos in the airline industry. In both North America and Europe, thousands of flights have been cancelled and hundreds of thousands of passengers have had their trips disrupted. </p> <p>Things will get worse before they get better. Air Canada has announced it will eliminate more than 150 daily flights for July and August. “Regrettably, things are not business as usual in our industry globally, and this is affecting our operations,” Air Canada president Michael Rousseau <a href="https://milled.com/air-canada/a-message-from-air-canadas-president-gQLU1OsSJMb4j5Fl">said in an email to customers when announcing the flight cutbacks</a>. </p> <p>So why is this happening? Here are answers to some key questions about the current problems with air travel.</p> <h2>Why are so many flights being cancelled or delayed?</h2> <p>The principal cause of the disruptions has been a shortage of qualified personnel at airports to handle the recent surge in passenger traffic.</p> <p>Airlines have been taking advantage of recent demand for air travel by returning aircraft and flight schedules to close to <a href="https://www.aviationpros.com/airlines/news/21271750/air-passengers-to-reach-83-of-2019-levels-this-year-iata">80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels</a>, with the resulting volume of flights putting significant stress on the capability of the supporting infrastructure — <a href="https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/06/easyjet-to-scrap-more-summer-flights-from-schiphol-klm-limits-sales/">airports, air traffic control and labour conditions</a>.</p> <h2>Are the problems only happening in certain airports or is this a worldwide issue?</h2> <p>The congestion phenomenon in the summer 2022 travel season is rapidly spreading across a number of European and North American airports. The reason behind this concentration of congestion is quite simple: these are the air travel markets that have experienced the highest volumes of air travellers in recent months.</p> <figure> <p>The rapid elimination of COVID-19 protocols in these markets since March have generated a significant increase in the demand for air travel, with volumes of passengers that haven’t been seen in more than two years. This increase in volume has been highly evidenced in major airline hub airports such as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/schiphol-airport-amsterdam-photos-security-staff-shortages-europe-flight-2022-6">Amsterdam</a>, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/airport-chaos-european-travel-runs-into-pandemic-cutbacks-1.5959561">London</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/19/us-travelers-flight-cancellations-chaos">New York</a> and <a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/8905320/frustrations-mount-over-ongoing-delays-at-toronto-pearson-airport">Toronto</a>, where tens of thousands of passengers are processed every day.</p> <h2>Are all the problems related to the pandemic?</h2> <p>When the global air travel market collapsed in March 2020 with the introduction of travel restrictions and border closures, the commercial aviation industry took steps to conserve cash and maintain a minimal workforce. </p> <p>Hundreds of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/02/01/airlines-lost-over-40000-workers-united-airlines-announced-another-14000-jobs-may-be-lost/?sh=6fa3ff1324b3">thousands of aviation workers were laid off or terminated</a>, with years of experience and technical expertise removed from the ranks of the commercial aviation communities. </p> <p>With the assistance of governments throughout the world, over US$200 billion of financial support was provided by governments to help the commercial aviation industry maintain minimal service and prevent financial collapse. </p> <p>When demand for air travel returned this March, the hiring frenzy began, but in a very different labour environment. The people who left in 2020 had, for the most part, moved on to other career opportunities and no longer had much interest in returning to an industry characterized by lower compensation and a higher employment risk. So the staff shortages have their genesis in the pandemic, and will continue to impact employment levels as travel returns.</p> <h2>How many more people are travelling these days compared to a year ago – and compared to pre-pandemic levels?</h2> <p>The International Air Transport Association publishes <a href="https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2022-releases/2022-06-09-01/">air travel statistics</a> relating to the volume of air travel throughout various world markets. It has noted that there is a significant difference in the volume of air travel, when compared to both 2021 and pre-pandemic levels. </p> <p>The air travel market that has demonstrated the highest rebound has been domestic North America — travel for April 2022 has increased more than 280 per cent compared to April 2021 traffic levels, but remains at slightly more than 30 per cent lower than April 2019 levels. </p> <p>In the Chinese domestic market, continuing pandemic-related travel restrictions and occasional city lockdowns have resulted in <a href="https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/publications/economic-reports/air-passenger-monthly-analysis---april-2022/">traffic levels down by close to 80 per cent</a> in April 2022, compared to April 2021 and 2019.</p> <h2>What can be done to prevent delays?</h2> <p>There are a number of perspectives that can be applied to a resolution of the current level of delays.</p> <p>European authorities have announced <a href="https://nltimes.nl/2022/06/16/schiphol-press-conference-many-flights-will-slashed-limit-passengers-ceo-wont-quit">specific reductions in flights</a>, while the U.S. government is <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/flight-cancellations-surge-buttigieg-demands-airlines-hire-staff-1717188">threatening to impose flight reductions</a> as a means of minimizing flight cancellations. </p> <p>The Canadian government has facilitated a meeting with the major aviation organizations in Canada to discuss <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/06/21/transport-minister-airlines-airports-delays/">a concerted and effective resolution </a> and <a href="https://investors.aircanada.com/2022-06-23-Air-Canada-Comments-on-Aviation-Industry-Summit-with-Federal-Transport-Minister">Air Canada announced measures</a> it was intending to implement to ease congestion at both Toronto Pearson and Montreal Trudeau airports. </p> <p>Canadian government officials have also announced <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/05/25/airport-delays-are-here-to-stay-for-the-long-term-due-to-a-shortage-of-workers-in-airport-security-union-says.html">plans to hire close to 2,000 additional border security and screening personnel</a> to deal with specific congestion issues. Labour groups are not certain that the problems of congestion will be addressed by such actions. </p> <p>The main issue is the volume of air travellers that are being drawn into the airport environment by the volume of flights operated by the airlines. Airlines have decided to grow their capacity to meet surging air travel demand, but the airport infrastructure is not equipped to handle such volumes. </p> <p>While such enthusiasm by the airline industry is laudable in times where adequate and experienced staff are available at airports, that is not the case now — and will not be the case for the foreseeable future.</p> <h2>How long will this last?</h2> <p>The summer travel season is in full flight in the northern hemisphere. Additional airline capacity and greater demand for air service by a travel-starved population will continue through at least September. </p> <p>Unless actions being contemplated by American, European and Canadian carriers results in a reduction of peak loading of aircraft movements across major airline hubs, in North America and Western Europe primarily, the congestion and delays will continue – and possibly worsen. </p> <p>Relief will most likely come in the fall, as demand for air travel is reduced with the arrival of the school season. Staffing will also reach required levels by the fall, with the arrival of normal commercial air operating conditions. </p> <p>Other issues that may reduce demand include <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2022/05/13/airfare-inflation-cool-demand-summer/?sh=42ae089032c3">higher airfares due to inflation and higher oil prices</a>, which may impact the survival of some airlines. </p> <h2>What advice would you give to air travellers over the next few months?</h2> <p>Airport authorities have been providing <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/travelling-this-summer-toronto-pearson-and-its-airport-partners-offer-travel-advice-for-passengers-822689624.html">guidance to travellers</a> on how best to prepare themselves for summer travel, including tips on how to avoid delays at security checks.</p> <p>In this coming summer of disruption, I would recommend travellers embark on their air journey with patience, ensure they are well-rested prior to departing for the airport and remember that airline staff are also experiencing stressful moments during their day. </p> <p>A smile, a thank you and, above all, a caring attitude for fellow travellers and staff is called for. The air travel experience will get better!</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/air-canada-flight-reductions-faqs-about-the-chaos-in-the-airline-industry-185750" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p> </figure>

International Travel

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Controversial reason man barred wife's bridesmaid

<p dir="ltr">A man has asked whether he’s in the right for asking his fiancée to ban her friend from their wedding because she works in the adult entertainment industry.</p> <p dir="ltr">The groom took to Reddit revealing that his future wife is very close friends with the adult industry star, who is well known and could possibly be asked for autographs at the wedding.</p> <p dir="ltr">However, he is questioning whether or not he is being reasonable to bar the friend from the wedding.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t disapprove of her at all, that’s her business. She’s great. But my family is staunchly religious,” he wrote.</p> <p dir="ltr">“So much so that my mom said that if the wedding was not held in a chapel she would not be attending. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I know it’s ridiculous but it’s my family. And it’s not just her, it’s that entire side with the exception of a few cousins and my siblings.”</p> <p dir="ltr">He insisted the problem with having her attend the wedding is because of how “recognisable she is” and even admitted to having seen some of her videos. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I’ll fully admit that prior to meeting her, I had watched a few of her videos just because of how viral they are,” he confessed.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I’m sure other guys there will have seen her videos too, and if something gets mentioned or pointed out it could cause so much drama that I really don’t want to deal with on the wedding day. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I also don’t want attention to be taken off the woman I’m marrying.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The couple broached the subject and his fiancée said she would have her friend at the wedding regardless of what anyone thinks or says despite trying to compromise.</p> <p dir="ltr">“She told me that she is one of her closest friends and that she’s not moving her out of our wedding just to appease my mother,” the man continued.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I told her that I want our day to go off without a hitch and this is just mitigating risk. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I also said that I felt that she owed me one because she vetoed a groomsman of mine because he cheated on someone in the bridal party.</p> <p dir="ltr">“She felt it was unfair and now we’re at an impasse. She told me that the way I was behaving was gross and I was being an a**hole.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The Reddit community did not hold back questioning why the man was so worried about his religious family’s reaction when they shouldn't be watching such content.</p> <p dir="ltr">“And how, pray, is this deeply religious family going to recognise an adult film actress? Anyone who recognises her has no right to be outraged,” someone wrote. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Your family is deeply religious, but you were going to have a cheating groomsman? How does that work? This is about you being a prude,” another commented.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I’m dying to know how the ‘very religious’ mother would know who this person was,” another interjected.</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>

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Green hydrogen is coming - and these Australian regions are well placed to build our new export industry

<p>You might remember hearing a lot about green hydrogen last year, as global pressure mounted on Australia to take stronger action on climate change ahead of the COP26 Glasgow summit last November.</p> <p>The government predicts green hydrogen exports and domestic use could be worth up to <a href="https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/taylor/media-releases/strong-potential-future-australia-germany-hydrogen-exports">A$50 billion within 30 years</a>, helping the world achieve deep decarbonisation.</p> <p>But how close are we really to a green hydrogen industry? And which states are best placed to host it? My research shows that as of next year, and based on where the cheapest renewables are, the best places to produce green hydrogen are far north Queensland and Tasmania.</p> <p>As ever more renewable energy pours into our grid, this picture will change. By the end of the decade, the north Queensland coast could become the hydrogen powerhouse. By 2040, dirt-cheap solar should make inland areas across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia the lowest cost producers.</p> <h2>Renewable energy you can store and transport</h2> <p>Why is there so much buzz around green hydrogen? In short, because it offers us a zero emissions way to transport energy. Take cheap renewable energy and use it to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolyser. Store the hydrogen on trucks, ship it overseas, or send it by pipeline. Then use the hydrogen for transport, manufacturing or electricity production.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440605/original/file-20220113-19-1sc50s2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440605/original/file-20220113-19-1sc50s2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Diagram of uses of green hydrogen" /></a> <span class="caption">Pathways for the production and use of green hydrogen.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></p> <p>All the technology exists – it’s the cost holding the industry back at present. That’s where Australia and its wealth of cheap renewable energy comes in.</p> <p>Making hydrogen is nothing new – it has a long history of use in fertiliser production and oil refining. But until now, the main source for hydrogen was gas, a fossil fuel.</p> <p>In the last few years, however, there has been a sudden surge of interest and investment in green hydrogen, and new technology pathways have emerged to produce cheap green hydrogen. As global decarbonisation gathers steam, Japan, South Korea and parts of Europe are looking for clean alternatives to replace the role fossil fuels have played in their economies.</p> <p>Australia is exceptionally well placed to deliver these alternatives, with world-beating renewable resources and ports set up for our existing fossil fuel exports, such as coal and LNG.</p> <p>In 2019, we sold almost $64 billion of black coal, with most going to Japan, South Korea, India and China. As these countries decarbonise, the coal industry will shrink. Green hydrogen could be an excellent replacement.</p> <h2>How competitive is Australian hydrogen?</h2> <p>At present, Australia is a long way from producing green hydrogen cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels, given we seem to have no appetite for taxing carbon pollution.</p> <p>Does that mean it’s a non-starter? Hardly. It was only a decade ago sceptics ridiculed solar and wind as too expensive. They’ve gone awfully quiet as renewable prices fell, and fell, and fell – as tracked by the <a href="https://www.irena.org/Statistics/View-Data-by-Topic/Costs/Global-Trends">International Renewable Energy Agency</a>. Now renewables are <a href="https://www.csiro.au/-/media/EF/Files/GenCost2020-21_FinalReport.pdf">cheaper than coal</a>. Battery storage, too, has fallen drastically in price. The same forces are at work on the key technology we need – cheaper electrolysers.</p> <p>By 2040, the CSIRO predicts an 83% fall in electrolyser costs, according to its <a href="https://publications.csiro.au/publications/publication/PIcsiro:EP2021-3374">Gencost 2021-22 report</a>. By contrast, gas-derived hydrogen with carbon capture is predicted to reduce in cost only slightly. That means green hydrogen is likely to capture much of the market for hydrogen from 2030 onwards.</p> <h2>Which states could benefit?</h2> <p>My research with the <a href="https://www.swinburne.edu.au/research/platforms-initiatives/victorian-hydrogen-hub/">Victorian Hydrogen Hub)</a> shows as of next year, the lowest cost location for green hydrogen would be Far North Queensland ($4.1/kg) and Tasmania ($4.4/kg) due to high renewable resources.</p> <p>But this picture will change. By 2030, northern Queensland’s coastal regions could be the Australian hydrogen powerhouse due to a combination of cheap solar and access to ports. Western Australia and the Northern Territory could also have similar advantages, though the modelling for these areas has not yet been done.</p> <p>As solar energy and electrolyser costs continue to fall, new states could enter the green hydrogen economy. In CSIRO’s cost predictions, electricity from solar is predicted to become much cheaper than wind by 2040. This means sunny areas like central and northern Queensland ($1.7/kg) and inland NSW, Victoria and South Australia ($1.8/kg) could be the best locations for green hydrogen production.</p> <p>In making these estimates, I do not consider supply chain and storage infrastructure required to deliver the hydrogen. Transport could account for between $0.05/kg to $0.75/kg depending on distance.</p> <p>Comparing my modelling to price thresholds set out in the <a href="https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/australias-national-hydrogen-strategy.pdf">National Hydrogen Strategy</a> indicates we can produce green hydrogen for trucking at a similar cost to diesel within four years. Fertiliser would take longer, becoming competitive by 2040.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440388/original/file-20220112-21-1jzafzm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440388/original/file-20220112-21-1jzafzm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption">The levelised cost of hydrogen at renewable energy zones in Australia for 2023, 2030 and 2040. (source: Steven Percy, Victorian Hydrogen Hub)</span></p> <h2>Does our dry country have the water resources for green hydrogen?</h2> <p>If we achieved the $50 billion green hydrogen industry the government is aiming for, how much water would it consume? Surprisingly little. It would take only around 4% of the water we used for our crops and pastures in <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/agriculture/water-use-australian-farms/latest-release">2019-20</a> to generate an export industry that size – 225,000 megalitres.</p> <p>Much more water than this will be freed up as coal-fired power stations exit the grid. In Queensland and NSW alone, these power stations consume around 158,000 megalitres a year according to a <a href="https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2020-04/apo-nid303605.pdf">2020 report</a> prepared for the Australian Conservation Foundation. Coal mining in these two states takes an additional 224,000 megalitres.</p> <p>As the cost of renewable energy falls and falls, we will also be able to desalinate seawater along our coasts to produce hydrogen. We estimate this would account for only about 1% of the cost of producing hydrogen, based on Australian Water Association <a href="https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/14568786/Fact%20Sheets/Desalination_Fact_Sheet.pdf">desalination cost estimates</a>.</p> <h2>How can we get there faster?</h2> <p>This decade, we must plan for our new hydrogen economy. Government and industry will need to develop and support new hydrogen infrastructure projects to produce, distribute, use and export hydrogen at scale.</p> <p>We’re already seeing promising signs of progress, as major mining companies <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-10/qld-palaszczuk-andrew-forrest-hydrogen-gladstone/100527670">move strongly</a> into green hydrogen.</p> <p>Now we need governments across Australia to rapidly get optimal policy and regulations in place to allow the industry to develop and thrive.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174466/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/steven-percy-611961">Steven Percy</a>, Senior Research Fellow, Victorian Hydrogen Hub, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/swinburne-university-of-technology-767">Swinburne University of Technology</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-hydrogen-is-coming-and-these-australian-regions-are-well-placed-to-build-our-new-export-industry-174466">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>

Domestic Travel

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The greener future of the live music industry

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As climate change discussions front global politics, many sectors of the arts are trying to find a solution to do their part to help environmental causes. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It turns out that staging a live show leaves behind a bigger carbon footprint than you might imagine, when considering the energy consumption involved with constant transport, lighting, PA systems and facilities, not to mention accommodating all the needs of the crew involved. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A </span><a href="https://juliesbicycle.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MA_Vol1_Touring_Bands_Report_2010.pdf"><span style="font-weight: 400;">study</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> conducted in 2010 found that the live music industry alone is responsible for a whopping 405,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in a single year in the UK alone, which does not include the amount of micro-plastics used throughout the duration of a tour. </span></p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7846781/carbon-footprint.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/9026b5caeed24eaeb98f841f3da3060d" /></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image credit: Green Touring Network</span></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Due to these astonishing figures, drastic measures are being taken to help reduce the amount of emissions produced by the music industry. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As early as 2004, Neil Young began to advocate for eco-friendly touring by exclusively using tour vehicles that only ran on biofuels made from soybeans and vegetable oils. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">More recently, artists such as Maroon 5 have been strong advocates for green touring, with the band co-founding the Green Music Group. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The group have “greened up” their tours by using biofuel in t</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">heir tour vehicles, advocating for use of solar power and other renewable energy sources, and even donating the entire income of their 2005 tour to the global environmental organization "Global Cool".</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Other musicians such as the rock band Green Day, Radiohead, Linkin Park, U2 and many more, have also opted for sustainably made merchandise, using ship transportation as opposed to air travel, and donating millions of dollars to organisations dedicated to the climate change fight. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though these changes seem small in the grand scheme of the global warming fight, influential musicians are still doing their part to ensure there is still a planet to perform on, while healing hearts with the incomparable experience of live music. </span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image credits: Getty Images</span></em></p>

Music

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How we can use the law to make the fashion industry fairer to women and the earth

<p>In March 1911, in a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inquiry/article/abs/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-of-1911-social-change-industrial-accidents-and-the-evolution-of-commonsense-causality/576CA665F1EC2DB1C246F9DA22AAD2BC">garment factory in Manhattan</a>, over 100 people, mostly Jewish and Italian women migrants, some as young as 14, were trapped inside and died as the factory burnt to the floor. Management had locked the doors.</p> <p>In the following years, women workers mobilised. Their protests catalysed major law reforms in the US which are still enjoyed today – social security, unemployment insurance, the abolition of child labour, minimum wages and the right to unionise.</p> <p>Yet the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is alarmingly reminiscent of the 2013 collapse of the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/geip/WCMS_614394/lang--en/index.htm">Rana Plaza</a> in the Savar Upazila district of Dhaka, Bangladesh, which saw the death of 1,134 people, mostly young women, and over 2,500 injured.</p> <p>Rana Plaza was home to factories manufacturing garments for <a href="https://archive.cleanclothes.org/safety/ranaplaza/who-needs-to-pay-up">renowned global brands</a>, but the spotlight on this tragedy is now dimming. Years on, accountability for the resulting safety accords remains insufficient and many factories continue to <a href="https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/five-years-after-rana-plaza-way-forward">escape scrutiny</a>.</p> <p>Consumers are increasingly looking for sustainable and ethical fashion. We believe these goals are inseparable from an industry which embraces gender justice. But gender justice cannot be achieved by consumer demand and boycotts alone. Instead, we need <a href="https://www.genderlawindex.org/">gender-responsive law reform</a>.</p> <p>Our <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-human-rights-journal/article/abs/fast-fashion-for-2030-using-the-pattern-of-the-sustainable-development-goals-sdgs-to-cut-a-more-genderjust-fashion-sector/326A2604C7FB89EAAC2B931B98F4C6A0">new research</a> sets out six ways to cut a more gender-just and sustainable fashion sector.</p> <h2>1. Accountability</h2> <p>The fashion sector’s gendered hierarchy is ingrained. Workers on the floor are largely female, while floor managers, security and factory owners are largely male.</p> <p>Female workers are vulnerable to harassment, violence and exploitation. There is an absence of adequate complaint mechanisms and women often risk retaliation.</p> <p>Accountability is needed not only in the countries producing garments, but also in countries where the garments are sold, and through all stages of the supply chain.</p> <p>Modern Slavery Acts, including <a href="https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act-2018-030">Australia’s 2018 law</a>, establish reporting obligations for businesses, requiring them to report on the due diligence they have conducted with respect to potential risks of exploitation in their supply chains.</p> <p>But accountability has to go beyond the current <a href="https://law.adelaide.edu.au/ua/media/1410/ALR_40%283%29_11_Vijeyarasa_Web.pdf">“naming and shaming” provisions</a>.</p> <p>Penalties should be imposed and used to fund victim compensation, not just for workplace injuries but also for workers who suffer gender-based harms.</p> <h2>2. A living wage</h2> <p>Minimum wages rarely equate to a <a href="https://www.globallivingwage.org/about/what-is-a-living-wage/">living wage</a>, one that affords a decent standard of living for the worker and her family.</p> <p>The United Nations’ <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">Sustainable Development Goals</a> call for full and productive employment and decent work for all.</p> <p>In factories, this would mean acknowledging a living wage is needed for workers to be able to afford food, water, housing, education, health care, transportation, clothing and other essential needs. This needs to be coupled with an appreciation of how workers are impacted when rental prices outpace annual increases in the minimum wage.</p> <p>Sustainable economic growth also requires financing the social security of workers including maternity leave, unemployment and disability insurance.</p> <h2>3. Community</h2> <p>Workers are often migrants who leave their children behind in the care of families.</p> <p>Many garment-producing countries lack sufficient gender-responsive public services needed by women workers: decent public housing, street lighting and healthcare in close proximity to factories.</p> <p>The Sustainable Development Goals ask for the recognition of the unequal share of unpaid care work borne by women. This impacts women workers’ lives outside the factory floor. Without this recognition, gendered labour will continue to sustain the global economy.</p> <p>Women also face <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C190">gender-based violence</a> on and off the factory floor. Legislation is needed to protect workers from such violence in all the spaces in which they move, including the commute to and from work.</p> <h2>4. Taxation</h2> <p>Potential tax revenue is lost by governments in garment-producing countries through regulatory loopholes.</p> <p>Rather than directly owning production factories, some companies claim to buy their products from “independent suppliers”. This arms-length principle eradicates the need for major retail brands to pay corporate tax in these countries.</p> <p>This lost revenue has a disproportionate impact on women, including undermining the provision of gender-responsive public services. Comprehensive social protection schemes remain underfunded.</p> <p>Reforms to eradicate these tax loopholes may see a notable increase in government revenue for garment-supply countries to fund these much needed services.</p> <h2>5. Representation and voice</h2> <p>Women make up the majority of garment workers, but their influence over corporate and government decision-making remains marginal.</p> <p>Trade unions have improved representation, but frequently their approach to gender equality is piecemeal. Many women fashion workers remain un-unionised. As a result, fundamental concerns of women workers are often given inadequate attention.</p> <p>The implementation of <a href="https://indicators.report/targets/8-8/">labour standards from the International Labour Organization</a> could see more spaces carved out for women worker’s interests to be voiced and heard.</p> <h2>6. Responsible consumption</h2> <p>Consumer choice is often presented as the key to transforming the fashion industry. Consumers need persuading to make human rights-based decisions, in the same way they are persuaded by brand, quality and price.</p> <p>Consumers may look for clothing labelled as “ethical fashion”, “organic” or “eco”, but shoppers are also wary of “<a href="https://jcsr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40991-019-0044-9">greenwashing</a>”.</p> <p>While <a href="http://www.makethelabelcount.org/">imperfect</a>, the European Union’s proposal to make transparent the <a href="https://www.ecotextile.com/2021070828060/materials-production-news/consultation-opens-on-european-pef-proposals.html">environmental footprint of clothing</a> should enable stronger transparency on the environmental impact of fashion labels.</p> <p>This transparency must also extend to human rights issues looking at how the clothing is produced.</p> <p>Clearly law and fashion have much to gain from each other. But there has to be a more robust and effective solution than shifting accountability from corporations to the individual. A simple boycott may not be the best choice: instead contact your local MP and encourage them to care about and demand gender-responsive law reform.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173235/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-liu-291632">Mark Liu</a>, Visiting Scholar: School of Architecture and School of Engineering, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-technology-sydney-936">University of Technology Sydney</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ramona-vijeyarasa-583428">Ramona Vijeyarasa</a>, Senior Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney and Women's Leadership Institute Australia Research Fellow</span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-can-use-the-law-to-make-the-fashion-industry-fairer-to-women-and-the-earth-173235">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: </em><em><span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/NEIL HALL</span></span></em></p>

Legal

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Making the tobacco industry pay for cigarette litter could stop 4.5 billion butts polluting the Australian environment

<p>Cigarette butts with filters are the most commonly littered item worldwide, with a staggering <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347528/">4.5 trillion</a> of them tossed into the environment each year. This is a huge problem; many end up on <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935119300787">beaches and in the ocean</a>, and the tar from burnt tobacco in the filter can be toxic to wildlife.</p> <p>Fixing the problem has focused on changing the behaviour of people who smoke, but a <a href="https://www.wwf.org.au/ArticleDocuments/353/pub-WWF-Australia-Ending-cigarette-butt-pollution-3Dec21.pdf.aspx">new report</a> shows making the tobacco industry responsible for the litter with a mandatory product stewardship scheme is likely to have a much greater impact.</p> <p>In Australia alone, it’s estimated up to 8.9 billion butts are littered each year. Under the proposed scheme, we could potentially reduce this by 4.45 billion a year.</p> <p>So how can it be done in practice? And what would the benefits be from a policy like this?</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433353/original/file-20211123-15-8zbai4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433353/original/file-20211123-15-8zbai4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Three wrens around a cigarette butt" /></a> <span class="caption">Smoked cigarette filters take months or even years to break down.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>Social and environmental costs</h2> <p>Cigarette filters are made of a bioplastic called cellulose acetate, and they typically take <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0117393">years to break down</a>. Smoked cigarette filters are infused with the same chemicals and heavy metals in the tar that harm humans when they smoke.</p> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/cigarette-butts-are-the-forgotten-plastic-pollution-and-they-could-be-killing-our-plants-119958">Research from 2019 found</a> adding cigarette butts to soil reduces the germination of grass and clover seeds and the length of their shoots. Seaworms exposed to used filters have <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14119">DNA damage and reduced growth</a>.</p> <p>And exposure to cigarette filters (even unsmoked ones) are toxic to fish – <a href="https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i25?utm_source=TrendMD&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=TC_TrendMD-0">research with two fish species </a> found adding two to four smoked cigarette filters per litre of water could kill them.</p> <p>Currently, the tobacco industry does not have to pay for the clean-up of cigarette butts polluting the environment. Rather, the community bears the cost. Cigarette litter and its management <a href="https://www.wwf.org.au/ArticleDocuments/353/pub-WWF-Australia-Ending-cigarette-butt-pollution-3Dec21.pdf.aspx">costs</a> the Australian economy an estimated A$73 million per year.</p> <p>Local councils in particular spend large amounts of money cleaning it up. The City of Sydney, for example, has estimated their cleaning crews sweep up <a href="https://campaignbrief.com/the-city-of-sydney-launches-ci/">15,000 cigarette butts daily</a> from city streets.</p> <p>And volunteers spend countless hours picking up cigarette butts from parks, streets and beaches. In its 2020 Rubbish Report, Clean Up Australia Day found cigarette butts accounted for <a href="https://www.cleanup.org.au/cigarette-butts">16% of all recorded items</a>.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433349/original/file-20211123-19-1qwxthm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433349/original/file-20211123-19-1qwxthm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Two smiling men hold bags of rubbish" /></a> <span class="caption">Volunteers, such as for Clean Up Australia Day, spend countless hours picking up cigarette butts from the enviornment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Glengarry Landcare VIC/Clean Up Australia</span></span></p> <h2>Current strategies are ineffective</h2> <p>The tobacco industry response to product waste has been to focus <a href="https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/2/100">responsibility on the consumer</a>. Tobacco companies have created public education campaigns aimed at increasing awareness of the butt litter problem, supplied consumers and cities worldwide with public ashtrays, and funded anti-litter groups.</p> <p>But given the amount of cigarettes that continue to be littered, it’s clear these strategies on their own have been ineffective. Many around the world are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-explores-next-steps-to-clean-up-tobacco-litter-in-england">now calling for stronger industry regulation</a>.</p> <p>There have also been calls to ban cigarette filters completely. For example, lawmakers in <a href="https://calmatters.org/environment/2019/06/california-cigarette-butt-filter-ban-bill-electronic-disposable-vapes/">California</a> and New York have attempted to ban the sale of cigarettes with filters, and New Zealand is finalising their <a href="https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/proposals_for_a_smokefree_aotearoa_2025_action_plan-final.pdf">Smokefree Aotearoa Action Plan</a>, which may include a cigarette filter ban.</p> <p>Many jurisdictions in Australia and worldwide are starting to ban single-use plastics such as straws and takeaway containers, and have <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l5890">been criticised</a> for not including cigarette filters in these laws.</p> <p>If filters were banned, cigarette butt litter would remain, but without the plastic filter. Although, <a href="https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2021/11/18/tobaccocontrol-2021-056815">a recent trial</a> of cigarettes without filters found that people smoked fewer of these than when they were given the same cigarettes with filters. More research is needed on the health impact of smoking filterless cigarettes and the environmental impact of filterless cigarette butts.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433352/original/file-20211123-27-d6ktd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433352/original/file-20211123-27-d6ktd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption">A pubic cigarette butt disposal facility in Salem, US.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>What would a stewardship scheme look like?</h2> <p>The federal government’s <a href="https://www.awe.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/national-plastics-plan-2021.pdf">National Plastics Plan</a>, released in March this year, committed to initiate a stewardship taskforce that would reduce cigarette butt litter in Australia, and would consider a potential stewardship scheme. However, they proposed the stewardship taskforce be industry led.</p> <p>Product stewardship schemes can be voluntary or written into law. For example, waste from product packaging is managed through a voluntary scheme, the <a href="https://www.awe.gov.au/environment/protection/waste/plastics-and-packaging/packaging-covenant">Australian Packaging Covenant</a>, which sets targets for reducing packaging waste that aren’t written into law. On the other hand, <a href="https://www.awe.gov.au/environment/protection/waste/product-stewardship/products-schemes/television-computer-recycling-scheme">there is a law in Australia</a> requiring companies who manufacture TVs or computers to pay some of the costs for recycling these products.</p> <p>The <a href="https://www.wwf.org.au/ArticleDocuments/353/pub-WWF-Australia-Ending-cigarette-butt-pollution-3Dec21.pdf.aspx">new research</a>, commissioned by World Wildlife Fund for Nature Australia, considered four regulatory approaches: business as usual, a ban on plastic filters, a voluntary industry product stewardship scheme, and a mandatory product stewardship scheme led by the federal government.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433344/original/file-20211123-13-tpimfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=0%2C16%2C5442%2C3600&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433344/original/file-20211123-13-tpimfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=0%2C16%2C5442%2C3600&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="A hand in blue plastic gloves holds a cigarette butt on the beach" /></a> <span class="caption">Cigarette litter costs the Australian economy an estimated A$73 million each year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Yurasits/Unsplash</span>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" class="license">CC BY</a></span></p> <p>Each of these options were ranked according to factors such as the regulatory effort required to implement them, their cost, consumer participation and the extent to which they would reduce environmental impacts on land and waterways.</p> <p>A ban on plastic cigarette filters and a mandatory product stewardship scheme were assessed as having the greatest potential environmental benefit. While uncertainties remain about a filter ban, there is no such barrier to implementing a mandatory product stewardship scheme on cigarette waste.</p> <p>This scheme could involve a tax that would pay for the recovery and processing costs associated with cigarette butt litter. The study suggested introducing a levy of A$0.004 – less than half a cent – on each smoked cigarette to manage the waste. Other studies from overseas, however, show this cost would need to be <a href="https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i36.full">higher</a>.</p> <p>We can look to the UK for an example of where to start. The UK is currently considering implementing an extended producer responsibility scheme to address cigarette litter. In November this year, it released a <a href="https://consult.defra.gov.uk/environmental-quality/call-for-evidence-on-commonly-littered-and-problem/supporting_documents/Call%20for%20evidence%20document.pdf">consultation document</a> on different options.</p> <p>They proposed a mandatory scheme where the tobacco industry would pay for the full costs of cleaning up and processing cigarette waste. Other costs they might be made to pay are for gathering and reporting data on tobacco product waste, provision of bins for cigarette butts, and campaigns to promote responsible disposal by consumers.</p> <p>It is time for the federal and state governments in Australia to make the tobacco industry pay for the mess they create.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171831/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kylie-morphett-1271253">Kylie Morphett</a>, Research Fellow, School of Public Health, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a></em>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/coral-gartner-7425">Coral Gartner</a>, Director, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a></em>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/william-clarke-380521">William Clarke</a>, Professor of waste management, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/making-the-tobacco-industry-pay-for-cigarette-litter-could-stop-4-5-billion-butts-polluting-the-australian-environment-171831">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Shuttershock</em></p>

Domestic Travel

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Cruise industry left out as international boarders reopen

<p><em>Image: Getty </em></p> <p>International boarders have come down, with the travel ban and the exemption requirement to go overseas finally ditched on November 1<sup>st</sup>.  </p> <p>Aussies desperate to go on holidays are already selling out flights to Europe, America and Asia.</p> <p>Despite flights being back on track, cruise companies are still unable to restart their Australian tours.</p> <p>However, there will be nothing stopping Aussies flying to places Miami, Florida and Nadi, Fiji, and enjoying a cruise overseas before flying home – making the Australian cruise ruling more farcical.</p> <p>The cruise industry was brought to a standstill early last year when the coronavirus pandemic hit Australia, with one of Australia’s first Covid outbreaks came from a cruise ship, when the <em>Ruby Princess</em> docked in Sydney last March.</p> <p>More than 900 infections and at least 28 deaths were eventually linked to the outbreak.</p> <p>The outbreak triggered a biosecurity ban on all foreign flagged vessels, with the cruise ban in place until December 17<sup>th</sup>.</p> <p>Despite hints from NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who has acknowledged the irony of Aussies being able to cruise overseas but not at home, the industry will still take months to restart.</p> <p>Speaking to news.com.au, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) managing director Australasia Joel Katz blasted the “ridiculous” and “disappointing” double standard.</p> <p>“We need the federal and state governments to come to the party,” Mr Katz said.</p> <p>“Just in the last couple of days, we’ve had a number of travel agents reach out to us with comments from a number of avid cruise passengers, asking us what the rules are about cruising overseas.</p> <p>“They’re planning to fly overseas to cruise because they can’t cruise at home and that’s really disappointing for the thousands of Aussies who rely on the cruise industry locally for their livelihoods.”</p> <p>Mr Katz said the cruise industry had been asking the Government “for a long time” to forge a way forward together.</p> <p>Despite some promising words from senior federal ministers and a number of premiers, Mr Katz said it was “time to convert words into action”.</p> <p>The Australian cruise industry has submitted robust Covid protocols that have already been tried and tested on more than three million passengers overseas, since cruising restarted in Europe and the US.</p> <p>Despite that, Mr Katz said the industry was still waiting on formal responses in Australia from the Government and health authorities.</p> <p>Even if those formal responses and approvals came tomorrow, the cruise industry is not one that can get things up and running quickly.</p> <p>“There are long lead times to get ships up and running. It’s very difficult for cruise companies to know when to push the start button with no certainty,” Mr Katz said.</p> <p>“The crew needs to be recruited and vaccinated, then they have to be flown out to wherever the ship is, go through a quarantine process, get trained on whatever new protocols are needed.</p> <p>“And, most of the ships are in the northern hemisphere, so they need to make their way down. All that needs to happen before they can even start the process of taking customers again.”</p> <p>Mr Katz predicted a restart of Australia’s cruise industry in January (in 10-12 weeks’ time), a prediction he quickly revised when P&amp;O announced it had been forced to again push its first cruises to February.</p> <p>P&amp;O Cruises Australia President Sture Myrmell said the voluntary pause had been extended due to the lack of a clear pathway towards restarting the industry.</p> <p>“We are naturally disappointed for our guests and our many suppliers to have to extend the pause in operations by a further month,” Mr Myrmell said this morning.</p> <p>“With society rapidly reopening including social gatherings and travel just weeks away, there is a vital need for a pathway for the staged resumption of domestic cruising.</p> <p>“Our guests have made it clear they want to cruise again, and we look forward to welcoming them on board as soon as possible supported by comprehensive protocols based on the world’s best public health practice and standards.”</p>

Cruising

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Paris Hilton calls on Biden to take account for troubled teen industry

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Paris Hilton has shared her own shocking experiences while calling on US President Joe Biden and Congress to do something about the “troubled teen industry”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The former reality TV star previously revealed she had faced mental and physical abuse as a teenager in youth facilities.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Appearing outside Capitol Hill, </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://celebrity.nine.com.au/latest/paris-hilton-strangled-slapped-watched-in-the-shower-troubled-teen-industry-reform/c0ee9436-162e-48e1-988b-503af5584097" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hilton said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">: “For 20 years I couldn’t sleep at night as memories of physical violence, the feeling of loneliness, the loss of peers rushed through my mind when I shut my eyes.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“This was not just insomnia. It was trauma.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hilton appeared on October 20 alongside other teen survivors to announce the Accountability for Congregate Care Act. They were joined by lawmakers representative Ro Khanna and Senator Jeff Merkley, who are co-sponsors of the legislation.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The 40-year-old star called on Biden to support the legislation, which would establish a bill of rights for children in youth facilities and act as oversight for the “troubled teens industry”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Ensuring children are safe from institutional abuse isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue,” she said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It’s a basic human rights issue that requires immediate attention.”</span></p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CVQrDczvaPA/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CVQrDczvaPA/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">A post shared by Paris Hilton (@parishilton)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In her speech, Hilton also shared her experiences and the trauma she endured as a teenager.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“One night when I was 16 years old,  I woke up to two large men in my bedroom asking if I wanted to go the easy way or the hard way,” she said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Thinking I was being kidnapped, I screamed for my parents. As I was being physically dragged out of my house, I saw them crying in the hallway. They didn’t come to my rescue that night.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“This was my introduction to the troubled teen industry.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“My parents were promised that tough love would fix me and that sending me across the country was the only way.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hilton went on to share details about her treatment at the facility she was taken to.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I was strangled, slapped across the face, watched in the shower by male staff, called vulgar names, forced to take medication without a diagnosis, not given a proper education, thrown into solitary confinement in a room covered in scratch marks and smeared in blood,” she said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I was forced to stay indoors for 11 months straight - no sunlight, no fresh air.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7845046/paris-hilton2.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/b08c4c74198f46a29f4b7cbdf2203326" /></span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Getty Images</span></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I wish I could tell you what I experienced or witnessed was unique or even rare, but sadly,it’s not,” she continued.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Every day in America, children in congregate care settings are being physically, emotionally and sexually abused.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the past, Hilton has also called on Biden to support another bill which would require youth residential treatment centres to be under additional government oversight and document when they use restraints.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Testifying at a February state Senate committee hearing in favour of the bill, Hilton told the committee that talking about such a personal subject “was and is still terrifying”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“But I cannot go to sleep at night knowing that there are children that are experiencing the same abuse that I and so many others went through, and neither should you.”</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Getty Images</span></em></p>

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How the travel industry still ignores people with disabilities

<p>As restrictions are gradually lifted, travelling abroad will be a high priority for many people. But for a disabled person, getting away on holiday can seem like a distant dream – with or without a pandemic.</p> <p>People with disabilities are still subjected to systematic discrimination when it comes to travel. They face barriers that non-disabled people do not, which can prevent them from going on holiday – or at least drastically limit their choice about where to go and what to do.</p> <p>Even before COVID-19, <a href="https://www.visitbritain.org/new-accessible-tourism-market-research">one survey</a> found that 52% of adults with a disability in the UK had not taken a holiday anywhere in the previous 12 months.</p> <p>The reasons are well known. Disabled people are often deprived of key three things: good information, appropriate facilities and positive attitudes from other people.</p> <p>To this end, many countries, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance">including the UK</a>, have introduced specific legislation to address these inequalities. The United Nations’ <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/RightsOfDisabledPersons.aspx">Declaration on the Rights of People with Disabilities</a> asserts the rights of disabled people to participate in cultural life, leisure, recreation and sports.</p> <p>You might expect this kind of political action means disabled people have equal access to travel. But when <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353520748_Strategic_approaches_to_accessible_ecotourism_Small_steps_the_domino_effect_and_paving_paradise">I interviewed</a> disabled travellers and people who work in ecotourism – in the UK, US, Australia, Canada and Sweden – it became apparent that many holiday providers fail to value their disabled customers.</p> <p>There are some for example, who merely aim to comply with regulations. They do not think there is a sufficient market for disabled guests, so they only made practical changes – such as investing in ramps – if the law strictly demanded it.</p> <p>One disabled traveller told how he mentioned to an ecolodge manager: “You just need to fix a couple of things in the room and it’ll be good.”</p> <p>The manager replied: “Why should we bother? We don’t make enough money out of you guys to really justify it.”</p> <p>Other business owners found such changes expensive to implement, but were motivated by keeping up with “good practice”. For this group, being disability-friendly made good business sense – but their efforts were often incomplete, only featuring in certain parts of the site for example, or for one particular kind of disability.</p> <p>As one study participant noted: “Instead of having the whole place accessible, mobility-wise, we just make sure at least two of the units and the main public areas are. That’s an alternative that seems to have worked.”</p> <p>It may seem odd that ecotourism – a form of tourism that values ethics and sustainability – does not appear to be leading the industry in tearing down barriers to disabled travel.</p> <p>But <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09669582.2021.1951278">recent research</a> found that even businesses with the highest level of ecotourism accreditation did little to accommodate the needs of disabled guests.</p> <h2>Universal travel</h2> <p>With respect to information, only 2% of the websites in that study – which focused on Australia – had a detailed information pack for disabled people to download. And while some businesses considered themselves to be disability-friendly, facilities tended to only consider wheelchair access.</p> <p>Even then, only 40% of all the websites provided any information to wheelchair users, while 6% mentioned visual disabilities and 8% referred to hearing loss. When it came to intellectual disabilities, only 8% even mentioned them.</p> <p>Almost all of the websites failed to extend simply courtesies, such as using captions (known as alternative text) to explain to people with visual disabilities what is depicted in a photograph, or subtitling video material to help people with hearing disabilities. A quarter of the businesses required disabled people to contact them ahead of the visit to enquire about suitable facilities.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413637/original/file-20210728-19-ry5ucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Tourist looking at pine forest." /><span class="attribution"></span></p> <p>Thankfully, there are also operators who believe ensuring that disabled people have an equal quality of experience to non-disabled people is an essential condition of being in business.</p> <p>This kind of approach needs to spread more widely. Disabled people will only truly have a right to a holiday when tourism businesses start to invest in adaptations for them. This means making provisions not only for wheelchair users but for all disability groups.</p> <p>It also means adapting business practices, updating websites and training staff to be able to serve their disabled guests appropriately and sensitively.</p> <p>It is estimated that there are around a billion disabled people across the world, representing around 15% of the world’s population. If the tourism industry is not willing to ensure these guests are treated as equals, that should make everyone uncomfortable. If society wants to see travel as a human right, it should be a right for everyone.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163685/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/brian-garrod-1236487">Brian Garrod</a>, Professor of Marketing, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/swansea-university-2638">Swansea University</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-travel-industry-still-ignores-people-with-disabilities-163685">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>

International Travel

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"That's rude": Tina Arena's explosive comment to Angela Bishop

<p>Australian music icon Tina Arena has slammed the lack off support given to the entertainment industry throughout the pandemic in a passionate plea on <em>Studio 10</em>. </p> <p>The singer, who will be featured in the upcoming <em>Young Talent Time</em> 50th anniversary special, blasted the "double standard" of the government cancelling music shows across the country, but sporting events still being allowed to go ahead. </p> <p>“I also hate the differentiation between sport and arts in Australia. As the artistic community, we will draw the line in the sand now and say, ‘No more of your double standards now,’” she continued.</p> <p>“Sport is a great thing, but life is not just about sport, life is about art and culture … I would encourage the artistic community to come forward, and I’d encourage anybody else to start thinking straight now.”</p> <p>Entertainment reporter Angela Bishop agreed with Tina, noting how much events has been cancelled on short notice, but "<span>never the footy match”.</span></p> <p><span>Tina was visibly outraged, </span>saying "That's a categoric disrespect."</p> <p>Tina Arena is one of millions of Melbourne natives who have been coping with seemingly endless lockdowns, <span>which is due to have had the most days under lockdown of any city in the world on October 4th. </span><br /><span></span></p> <p><span>“I’ve really struggled, and I’m comfortable in saying that. I’ve had a very difficult time, like many people. I’m profoundly against being locked up – the injustice is too much,” Arena said.</span></p> <p><span>Continuing on the injustice of the music industry, Tina noted how little financial support the arts have received during the pandemic. </span></p> <p><span>“I’m sorry, that’s rude, disrespectful, and shouldn’t be at all allowed to play out." </span></p> <p><span>"Never, ever silence an artist – we play an important role in the social fibre of any country. It’s freedom of expression, and I’ll fight for it until the day I die.”</span></p> <p><span>Angela Bishop noted that one of Tina's few stage performances in recent years was the February 2020 Firefight </span>concert to raise money for those affected by the bushfires. </p> <p><span>“It seems people have forgotten about the arts community when </span>they’re <span>in need,” Angela suggested, to which Arena agreed.</span></p> <p>“If anything goes wrong, the artistic community has always lifted their sleeves up."</p> <p>"We’ve gone in there and done what we needed to do. We’re very happy to play that role to help people – it’s what we do,” said Arena.</p> <p>“Now we’re in trouble, is someone helping us? No. It’s amazing how people just fly away and disappear..."</p> <p>“You know what? DONE. We’re done, and now we’re saying it. Just stop this ridiculous, preposterous behaviour. It’s got to stop,” she said.</p> <p>Tina's impassioned speech struck a chord with viewers ion Studio 10, as many agreed that more should be done to support Australian artists. </p> <p>One fan tweeted, "I'm ready for Tina Arena to be PM."</p> <p>Another said, "Tina articulating how we all feel. We are an incredibly resilient community but we are beyond exhausted."</p> <p><em>Image credit: Studio 10</em></p>

Music

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Global tourism industry may shrink by more than 50 per cent due to the pandemic

<p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328515/original/file-20200416-192703-1x89lu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328515/original/file-20200416-192703-1x89lu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" class="license">CC BY-SA</a></span></p> <p>Due to the coronavirus, people around the world have canceled their travel plans. Governments and health officials have warned the public to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0409-modifications-extension-no-sail-ships.html">avoid boarding cruise ships</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/faqs.html">long flights</a>. <a href="https://www.isitcanceledyet.com/">Major events</a> like conferences, trade shows and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/tokyo-2020-olympics-postponed-over-coronavirus-concerns-n1165046">the Olympics</a> have been canceled or postponed.</p> <p>As a result, many businesses in the travel and tourism industry are likely to find themselves in jeopardy.</p> <p>Predicting the economic impact of the coronavirus right now is akin to participating in a running competition without knowing how long the course is. However, a few things are already clear.</p> <p><strong>Our study</strong></p> <p><a href="https://m3center.org/our-team/">We conducted a study </a> during the third week of March with more than 2,000 travelers from 28 countries. Via Amazon Mechanical Turk, we asked respondents about their travel behaviors during the pandemic.</p> <p>Our study showed that 63.8% of the travelers will reduce their travel plans in the next 12 months. More than half canceled their business travel immediately due to the coronavirus.</p> <p>Results of our study predict that, compared to last year, the travel industry, which includes businesses such as airlines, hotels and restaurants, will shrink by 50% in 2020, which would mean a significant loss of jobs and revenue.</p> <p>The number of international travelers could shrink from <a href="https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284421152">1.4 billion</a> to fewer than 1 billion people. That would be the first time the international traveler number has fallen that low since 2015.</p> <p>We also asked respondents to rate their perceived image of China and Italy, two of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic. Interestingly, U.S. travelers’ image of China and Italy has deteriorated. The image of China was damaged most significantly, as some people blame China for the spread of the virus.</p> <p>However, we expect that this image may recover soon, as research shows that travelers have a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2011.647264">short memory about the negative aspects of a destination after a disaster</a>.</p> <p><strong>Sizing up the impact</strong></p> <p>The travel industry has faced many challenges in the past, including the 9/11 attacks and the Great Recession, but none are similar in magnitude to the coronavirus. For example, the travel industry <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230100060_7">shrank by 31.6% after 9/11</a>.</p> <p>In the U.S, the travel and tourism industry <a href="https://www.selectusa.gov/travel-tourism-and-hospitality-industry-united-states">generated US$1.6 trillion in 2017</a> in economic output.</p> <p>A study from Tourism Economics, a company that consults in the tourism sector, predicts that the U.S. tourism industry will lose <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/coronavirus-travel-industry-could-lose-24-billion-in-tourism-from-outside-us.html">at least $24 billion</a> in 2020, thanks to a widespread loss of spending at restaurants, hotels, theme parks and more.</p> <p>The World Travel and Tourism Council, which represents the global private sector of Travel &amp; Tourism, <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/world-travel-coronavirus-covid19-jobs-pandemic-tourism-aviation/">predicts up to 50 million jobs</a> in the global travel industry could be lost.</p> <p>While the economic impact of the coronavirus is significant, its impact on people’s social interaction, too, will likely be felt for years to come.<em><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></em></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/faizan-ali-1032118">Faizan Ali</a>, Assistant Professor, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-south-florida-1359">University of South Florida</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/cihan-cobanoglu-1033454">Cihan Cobanoglu</a>, McKibbon Endowed Chair Professor, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-south-florida-1359">University of South Florida</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/global-tourism-industry-may-shrink-by-more-than-50-due-to-the-pandemic-134306">original article</a>.</em></p>

International Travel

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American Dirt fiasco exposes the shortcomings of publishing industry

<p>In an early chapter of <em><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/American_Dirt_Oprah_s_Book_Club/FkiSDwAAQBAJ?hl=en">American Dirt</a></em>, the much-hyped novel now at the center of a racial controversy, the protagonist, Lydia, fills her Acapulco, Mexico, bookstore with her favorite literary classics. Because these don’t sell very well, she also stocks all “the splashy bestsellers that made her shop profitable.”</p> <p>Ironically, it’s this lopsided business model that has, in part, fueled the backlash to the book.</p> <p>In the book, Lydia’s favorite customer, a would-be poet turned ruthless drug lord, orders the massacre of Lydia’s entire family after her journalist husband writes a scathing expose. Lydia and her 8-year-old son must flee for their lives, joining the wave of migrants seeking safety in the U.S.</p> <p>With the border crisis as its backdrop, the book was anointed by the publishing industry as one of those rare blockbusters that Lydia might have stocked in her fictional bookstore. Its publisher called it “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250209764">one of the most important books of our time</a>,” while <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-01-27/oprah-winfrey-american-dirt-book-club">Oprah</a> chose it for her book club.</p> <p>But the author, Jeanine Cummins, is neither Mexican nor a migrant, and critics <a href="https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/">savaged the book</a> for its cultural inaccuracies and damaging stereotypes. At least one library at the border <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/opinion/american-dirt-book.html">refused to take part in Oprah’s promotion</a>, 138 published authors wrote an <a href="https://lithub.com/dear-oprah-winfrey-82-writers-ask-you-to-reconsider-american-dirt">open letter to Oprah</a> asking her to rescind her endorsement, and the publisher canceled Cummins’ book tour, claiming <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/30/american-dirt-tour/">her safety was at risk</a>.</p> <p><a href="https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/people/journalism/christine-larson">As someone who studies the publishing business</a>, I see this ordeal as a symptom of an industry that relies far too heavily on a handful of predetermined “big books,” and whose gatekeepers remain predominantly white.</p> <p>Sadly, this model has become only more powerful in the digital era.</p> <p><strong>A high-stakes poker game</strong></p> <p>Today’s publishing industry is driven by three truths.</p> <p>First, people don’t buy many books. The typical American <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/25/one-in-five-americans-now-listen-to-audiobooks/">read four last year</a>.</p> <p>Second, it’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2013/03/28/book-discovery-give-me-blind-dates-with-books/#1d6618f23192">hard to decide which books to buy</a>, so most people look for bestsellers or books by authors they already like.</p> <p>Third, nobody – not even big publishers – can predict hits.</p> <p>As a result, the business can sometimes seem like one big, high-stakes poker game. Like any savvy gambler, editors know that most bets are losers: People don’t buy nearly enough books to make every title profitable. In fact, only about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/books/review/Meyer-t.html">70% of books</a> even earn back their advances.</p> <p>Luckily for publishers, a single hit, like Michelle Obama’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38746485-becoming?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=bwZd6RTzVB&amp;rank=1"><em>Becoming</em></a>, can subsidize the vast majority of titles that don’t make money.</p> <p>So when publishers think they have a winning hand, they’ll bet the house. To them, “American Dirt” seemed to have all the cards, and the book sold at auction for <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/book-deals/article/76994-book-deals-week-of-may-28-2018.html">seven figures</a>.</p> <p>With that much money on the table, publishers will do everything they can to ensure a payoff, channeling massive marketing resources into those select titles, often at the expense of their others.</p> <p><strong>Who’s holding the purse strings?</strong></p> <p>It wasn’t always like this. Back in the 1960s, publishing was a sleepy industry, filled with <a href="https://www.pw.org/content/publishing_in_the_twentyfirst_century_an_interview_with_john_b_thompson">many moderately sized firms making moderate returns</a>. Today, just <a href="https://www.bookbusinessmag.com/post/big-5-financial-reports-reveal-state-traditional-book-publishing/">five conglomerates</a> dominate global publishing.</p> <p>Big firms seek big profits, and, as Harvard Business School professor <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/10/24/239795165/blockbusters-go-big-or-go-home-says-harvard-professor">Anita Elberse</a> has pointed out, it’s cheaper and easier to launch one enormous promotional effort for a single “big book” than to spread resources across those smaller bets.</p> <p>With each publishing house releasing just one or two big books a season, few authors can hope to produce one of those splashy bestsellers.</p> <p>That’s even more true for marginalized authors, because every step in the publishing and publicity process depends on <a href="https://blog.leeandlow.com/2020/01/28/2019diversitybaselinesurvey/">gatekeepers who are largely white</a> – to the tune of 85% of editors, 80% of agents, 78% of publishing executives and 75% of marketing and publicity staff.</p> <p>Nevertheless, the book world does occasionally publish blockbusters by authors of color, whether it’s <em>Becoming</em> or Tayari Jones’ <em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/books/review/american-marriage-tayari-jones.html">An American Marriage</a></em>. As black author Zora Neale Hurston <a href="https://pages.ucsd.edu/%7Ebgoldfarb/cogn150s12/reading/Hurston-What-White-Publishers-Wont-Print.pdf">wrote in 1950</a>, editors “will publish anything they believe will sell” – regardless of the author’s race.</p> <p>But those editor beliefs about what would sell, she noted, were extremely limited when it came to authors of color. Stories about racial struggle, discrimination, oppression and hardship – those would sell. But books about marginalized people living everyday lives, raising kids or falling in love? Publishers had no interest in those stories.</p> <p>Of course, well-told stories of struggle are important. But when they’re the only stories that the industry aggressively promotes, then readers suffer from what novelist Chimamanda Adichie calls “<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en">the danger of a single story</a>.” When a single story gets told repeatedly about a culture that readers haven’t experienced themselves, stereotypes become more and more deeply engraved in popular culture. In a self-perpetuating cycle, publishers become even more committed to promoting that one story.</p> <p>Much of the criticisms around <em>American Dirt</em> centered on Cummins’ lack of first-hand experience – the book, for instance, was peppered with <a href="https://medium.com/@davidbowles/non-mexican-crap-ff3b48a873b5">inaccurate Spanish expressions</a> and off-key notes about the middle-class heroine’s actions and choices.</p> <p>While a vast network of publishing insiders would have likely looked at <em>American Dirt</em> before it was published, they all missed elements that were glaringly evident to informed readers. For the mostly white publishing world, Cummins’ book simply fit the narrative of the “single story” and aligned with pop culture stereotypes.</p> <p>Its failings easily slipped past the blind spots of the gatekeepers.</p> <p><strong>The internet’s unfulfilled promise</strong></p> <p>The internet was supposed to have upended this system. Just 10 years ago, pundits and scholars heralded <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/22/society1/">the end of gatekeepers</a> – a world where anyone could be a successful author. And indeed, with the digital self-publishing revolution in the late 2000s, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-own-the-system-amazon-rewrites-book-industry-by-turning-into-a-publisher-11547655267">hundreds of thousands of authors</a>, previously excluded from the marketplace, were able to release their books online.</p> <p>Some even made money: <a href="https://christinelarson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Christine-Larson-Open-networks-open-books-gender-precarity-and-solidarity-in-digital-publishing-1.pdf">My research</a> has found that romance writers doubled their median income from 2009 to 2014, largely due to self-publishing. Romance authors of color, in particular, found new outlets for books excluded by white publishers. Back in 2009, before self-publishing took off, the Book Industry Study Group identified just six categories of romance novels; by 2015, it tracked 33 categories, largely driven by self-publishing. New categories <a href="https://bisg.org/page/Fiction">included African American, multicultural, interracial and LGBT</a>.</p> <p>By 2018, at least <a href="https://www.actualitte.com/PDF/autopublication%20etats%20unis%20chiffres%20bowker.pdf">1.6 million books across all genres had been self-published</a>. Nonetheless, though choice is expanding, readership has stayed <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/25/one-in-five-americans-now-listen-to-audiobooks">flat since 2011</a>. With more books but no more readers, it’s harder than ever to get the attention of potential buyers.</p> <p>Meanwhile, many grassroots outlets that could push a midlist book – industry jargon for one not heavily promoted by publishers – to moderate levels of success have receded. Local media outlets that could create buzz for a local author are hollowed out or <a href="https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/">have vanished altogether</a>. In 1991, there were some <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wruuBgAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PT43&amp;lpg=PT43&amp;dq=john+b+thompson+decline+of+independent+bookstores&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=5l9nKK1Tbi&amp;sig=ACfU3U01GFevWyDLEGvuDwSwDvaE7Uovzw&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjatPqaiLbnAhXFXc0KHU-LCNQQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=john%20b%20thompson%20decline%20of%20independent%20bookstores&amp;f=false">5,100 indie booksellers</a>; now there are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/03/29/598053563/why-the-number-of-independent-bookstores-increased-during-the-retail-apocalypse">half that many</a>.</p> <p>The onus is now on authors to promote their own work. They’re spending a full day a week doing so, according to a forthcoming paper I wrote for the Authors’ Guild. In that same paper, I find that authors of color earn less from their books than white authors; in addition to other serious problems, this indicates they may have fewer resources to promote themselves.</p> <p>It’s clear the internet has not delivered the democratization it promised.</p> <p>But it has helped authors in at least one important way. Social media has offered a powerful outlet for marginalized voices to hold the publishing industry accountable. We’ve seen this twice already this year – with <em>American Dirt</em> and with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-the-romance-writers-of-america-can-implode-over-racism-no-group-is-safe-130034">Romance Writers of America</a>, which lost sponsors after it penalized an author of color for condemning racial stereotypes.</p> <p>Such outcries are an important start. But real progress will require structural change from within – beginning with a more diverse set of editors.</p> <p>On Feb. 3, executives from Macmillan, the publisher of <em>American Dirt</em>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/03/macmillan-latinx-american-dirt-dignidad-literaria">met with Hispanic authors and promised to diversify its staff</a>.</p> <p>It’s an example that the rest of the publishing industry should follow.<!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/christine-larson-426866"><em>Christine Larson</em></a><em>, Assistant Professor of Journalism, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-colorado-boulder-733">University of Colorado Boulder</a></em></span></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-dirt-fiasco-exposes-publishing-industry-thats-too-consolidated-too-white-and-too-selective-130755">original article</a>.</em></p>

Books

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How countries can recycle more buildings

<p>More than <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118710">35 billion tonnes</a> of non-metallic minerals are extracted from the Earth every year. These materials mainly end up being used to build homes, schools, offices and hospitals. It’s a staggering amount of resources, and it’s only too likely to increase in the coming years as the global population continues to grow.</p> <p>Thankfully, the challenges of sustainable construction, industrial growth and the importance of resource efficiency are now clearly recognised by governments around the world and are now at the forefront of strategy and policy.</p> <p>A critical component of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/securing-the-future-delivering-uk-sustainable-development-strategy">UK government’s sustainability strategy</a> concerns the way in which construction and demolition waste – CDW, as we call it in the trade – is managed. CDW comes from the construction of buildings, civil infrastructure and their demolition and is one of the heaviest waste streams generated in the world – 35% of the world’s landfill is made up of CDW.</p> <p>The EU’s <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/growth/content/eu-construction-and-demolition-waste-protocol-0_en">Waste Framework Directive</a>, which aims to recycle 70% of non-hazardous CDW by 2020, has encouraged the construction industry to process and reuse materials more sustainably. This directive, which favours preventive measures – for example, reducing their use in the first place – as the best approach to tackling waste, has been implemented in the UK since 2011. More specific to the construction industry, the <a href="https://www.sustainabilityexchange.ac.uk/berr-strategy-for-sustainable-construction">Sustainable Construction Strategy</a> also sets overall targets for diverting CDW from landfill.</p> <p>Policies worldwide recognise that the construction sector needs to take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, tackle the climate crisis and limit resource depletion, with a focus on adopting a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-a-circular-economy-29666">circular economy</a> approach in construction to ensure the sustainable use of construction materials.</p> <p>Instead of simply knocking buildings down and sending the CDW to landfill, circular construction would turn building components that are at the end of their service life into resources for others, minimising waste.</p> <p>It would change economic logic because it replaces production with sufficiency: reuse what you can, recycle what cannot be reused, repair what is broken, and re-manufacture what cannot be repaired. It will also help protect businesses against a shortage of resources and unstable prices, creating innovative business opportunities and efficient methods of producing and consuming.</p> <p><strong>Changing the mind-set</strong></p> <p>The mind-set of the industry needs to change towards the cleaner production of raw materials and better circular construction models. Technical issues – such as price, legal barriers and regulations – that stand in the way of the solutions being rolled out more widely must also be overcome through innovation.</p> <p>Materials scientists, for example, are currently investigating and developing products that use processed CDW for manufacturing building components – for example, by crushing up CDW and using it to make new building materials.</p> <p>Technical problems around the reuse of recycled materials should be solved through clever material formulations and detailed property investigations. For instance, the high water absorption rate in recycled aggregates causes durability problems in wall components. This is something that research must address.<span class="attribution"><a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/manager-engineer-check-control-automation-robot-1104780941" class="source"></a></span></p> <p>Moreover, it is illegal in the EU to use products that haven’t been certified for construction. This is one of the main obstacles standing in the way of the more widespread reuse of materials, particularly in a structural capacity. Testing the performance of materials for certification can be expensive, which adds to the cost of the material and may cancel out any savings made from reusing them.</p> <p>For the construction, demolition and waste management industries to remain competitive in a global marketplace, they must continue to develop and implement supply chain innovations that improve efficiency and reduce energy, waste and resource use. To achieve this, substantial research into smart, mobile and integrated systems is necessary.</p> <p>Radically advanced robotic artificial intelligence (AI) systems for sorting and processing CDW must also be developed. Many industries are facing an uncertain future and today’s technological limitations cannot be assumed to apply. The construction industry is likely to be significantly affected by the potential of transformative technologies such as AI, 3D printing, virtual/augmented reality and robotics. The application of such technologies presents both significant opportunities and challenges.</p> <p><strong>A model for the future</strong></p> <p>As the image below shows, we have developed a concept for an integrated, eco-friendly circular construction solution.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304567/original/file-20191201-156095-1h42cnl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /> <span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></p> <p>Advanced sensors and AI that can detect quickly and determine accurately what can be used among CDW and efficient robotic sorting could aid circular construction by vastly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2018.05.005">improving the recycling of a wide range of materials</a>. The focus should be on the smart dismantling of buildings and ways of optimising cost-effective processes.</p> <p>The industry must also be inspired to highlight and prove the extraordinary potential of this new construction economy. We can drive this through a combination of creative design, focused academic research and applied technology, external industry engagement and flexible, responsive regulation.</p> <p>Only through a combination of efforts can we start to recycle more buildings, but I’m confident that with the right will – and the right investment – we can start to massively reduce the amount of materials we pull from the ground each year and move towards a truly sustainable future.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126563/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/seyed-ghaffar-500624">Seyed Ghaffar</a>, Associate Professor in Civil Engineering and Environmental Materials, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/brunel-university-london-1685">Brunel University London</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-can-recycle-more-buildings-126563">original article</a>.</em></p>

Domestic Travel

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“Dear tech”: IBM pens open letter to the tech industry

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">IBM is urging the tech sector to use technology for the good of humanity instead of its downfall in an open letter to the industry called “Dear Tech”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">According to the firm, the world needs tech companies that can apply “smart technologies at scale with purpose and expertise — not just for some of us, but for all of us”. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As the global tech giant held its annual Think summit in Sydney, it showcased the mindboggling ways that artificial intelligence is being used to tackle the world’s biggest problems, according to </span><a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2019/05/22/ibm-think-summit-2019/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The New Daily.</span></a></p> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9">  <iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gNF8ObJR6K8"></iframe></div> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Stefan Harrer says that healthcare is ideal for the use of artificial intelligence (AI).</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Ultimately we want to be able to use and develop technology to improve peoples’ lives,” Dr Harrer said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We want to build tech that can help improve the lives of people that suffer from a variety of diseases.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“That requires that we do cutting-edge research and develop the tech and think hard about how to translate it into trustworthy and impactful solutions.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, as AI becomes more commonplace, it’s more important than ever that there are strict ethics in place around it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It’s as important to pay enough attention to getting the ethical framework right around AI as it is the technology,” Dr Harrer said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“This revolution will not look like the information revolution, it’s not move fast and break things.”</span></p>

Technology

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Could this be the cruising industry’s saving grace?

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cruising is a massive holiday go-to, with an estimate of 25 million passengers expected to go on one in 2019. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, despite the joy this may create for cruise lines – they face more risks and dangers. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Technology may just be coming to the rescue however, with researchers and cruise lines working hard to test a new wireless system, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">LYNCEUS. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This software may have the ability to keep track of every passenger boarding a cruise. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Antonis Kalis, Head of Research and Development at </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">SignalGeneriX</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, told </span><a href="https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/24/abandon-ship-how-technology-is-coming-to-the-rescue-of-the-cruise-industry"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Futuris</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">cruise lines would have the ability to integrate a tracking device in a key card or bracelet. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Various cruise companies already provide electronic tools for their passengers so that they can make purchases or access their cabins.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The bracelet would also have the ability to find every passenger in a crisis situation through a wireless network covering the whole ship. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For the sake of privacy however, developers maintain the function would be a resource used only in “real emergencies.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Chief executive of </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">OptionsNet</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">IT Services, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yiannis Panaretou, said the system would provide a valuable resource to locate missing people on cruise ships. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The ship safety officer can see where the crew and passengers are located, and there’s a way to focus on a single missing person — you can use a search panel to find exactly where that person is.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">What makes this new technology even better is that it will be able to trace passengers who go missing at sea by integrating the device into life jackets. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rescuers would have access to additional handheld antennas or have drones or helicopters that would have the ability to send signals that smart life jackets would be able to automatically pick up. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This cutting edge technology is already being tested by major cruise lines, and are expected to be rolled out for commercial use in the near future. </span></p>

Cruising

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Amal Clooney's emotional tribute to husband George

<p>Amal Clooney has given a rare romantic toast to her husband Hollywood star George Clooney as he was honoured with an American Film Industry (AFI) Life Achievement Award earlier this week.</p> <p>Amal admitted she was nervous stepping into the spotlight but wanted to pay tribute to her husband.</p> <p>"It's somehow easier for me to address a court on behalf of a detainee than to speak publicly, as I'm doing for the first time tonight for my husband," the international human rights lawyer said from the stage.</p> <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wFTeturM0zo" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p> <p>The barrister, 40, then shared some never-before-revealed details of their romance.</p> <p>"I met George when I was 35 and starting to become quite resigned to the idea that I was going to be a spinster," she said. "Then we met, started hiding out in my London flat and very soon it felt like no matter what happened I would never want to be with anyone else. I couldn't sleep when we were apart, and I'm told I would display a particular grin and head tilt when reading his text messages or the letters that he would hide in my bag.</p> <p>"Five years later, none of that has changed," she continued. "He is the person who has my complete admiration, and also the person whose smile makes me melt every time. My love, what I have found with you is the great love that I always hoped existed. And seeing you with our children, Ella and Alexander, is the greatest joy in my life. You fill our home with laughter and happiness and that's even before the children have worked out that 'Dada' is actually Batman."</p> <p>She also spoke about her husband’s generosity, his fight for justice, and his witty sense of humour.</p> <p>“Although George’s modesty attributes much of the success we are celebrating here tonight to luck, I think it’s incredible talent and character that got him here and these attributes also make him an amazing husband and father,” she said.</p> <p>George, who visibly teared up during Amal's speech, also gave a heartwarming speech when he took to the stage to accept his AFI award from past winner Shirley MacLaine.</p> <p>"So yesterday, my two children turned one year old," the Oscar-winner said, adding: "I thought if you had a successful career that you weren't really going to be able to have one great love in your life. And then Amal walked in.</p> <p>"And now we've got these two knuckleheads," Clooney continued. "And every day they make me feel small. And Amal...you make every single day, every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, as special as today."</p> <p> </p>

Movies