Cruise Ship Scrubbers are the perfect metaphor for our times.

Have you heard about scrubbers?

Machines bolted onto the chimneys of cruise ships, designed to "clean" the smoke after burning one of the dirtiest fuels on earth: heavy fuel oil.

They don’t stop the pollution. They just rinse the evidence.

Usually with seawater. The toxic leftovers? Pumped straight into the ocean.

On paper, emissions drop.
In reality, the damage just shifts, from air to water.
Like sweeping dust under the rug and calling the room clean.

But the problem isn’t the scrubber.
It’s the mindset.

We’re obsessed with not looking bad instead of doing better.

Scrubbers are what we build when we want to keep the system running, and feel a little less guilty about it.

Just like carbon offsets.
Just like green labels that mean nothing.

It’s not transformation.
It’s maintenance of a broken story.

Our planet is not fooled by a cleaner chimney.