We should not go anywhere, beyond a cycle ride to the nearest no-packaging outlet for mung beans and lentils, subsisting, where possible, on our home-grown turnips. We must stop oil, actively cancelling those companies whose investment policies are inimical to our immovable views on the subject.
We must treat the internal combustion engine as a device of the Devil (although we don't believe he exists). We must protest against tourism, air transport, and, above all, the international cruise industry; cruising ticking every box in the sin section of the people's march to net zero and sustainability.
Being beastly to visitors is a good starting policy along this righteous green road. It is why hapless visitors, drinking their coffee in fashionable street cafes in Northern Europe, are being made to feel less welcome this year.
This handy manifesto might sum up the views of a militant minority in which climate fanatics are now plugging themselves into the perhaps understandable local reaction to a surfeit of tourists in popular places around the world. And in an age when so many people feel that they must protest about something – marching, screaming and shouting as if this will in some way enable them to achieve their deluded aims – the presence of cruise ships is increasingly aggregating all their vociferous objections.
To a certain extent, there must be a level of understanding about the feelings of locals at being swamped by great armies of visitors disgorged from giant cruise ships, which themselves can scarcely be said to enhance the harbour view. They block up the pavements, cause traffic jams with their excursion coaches, and individually spend very little compared to those who stay in hotels and eat in restaurants. They might be great for the finances of the port authority, and for proprietors of motor coach companies, but for those who must live in these places, the season may not be one for eager anticipation.
Thus, there is already some simmering discontent in many parts of the world, onto which the climate fanatics are willing and able to fasten, with their joyless hyperbole of environmental doom. To do them justice, the cruise companies have recognised the growing problem of over-tourism and are attempting to spread the burden, search out new destinations, and provide more attractions aboard their ships, so that the destinations become less of a marketing ploy. They are working hard to reduce their emissions, noise and general impact upon the places they visit, although it will never be enough for the more rabid fanatics whose general beliefs are encapsulated above.
In some respects, you might argue that such are the on-board attractions aboard the largest cruise ships, there is not much point in going anywhere and they could save a great deal of effort by offering a completely static holiday, like a giant multi-decked camp. Why would you ever want to go ashore, when such a range of spectacular adventures are available within a single, giant, hull?
Perhaps it could be moved with the seasons, to always be in more equable places where it was not raining or snowing, but a secure berth with a good supply of power and waste collection facilities would surely suffice. It would be a huge consumer of local produce, so it would be a net contributor to the local economy, without the negatives associated with mass tourism.
It would not even have to be in a particularly attractive part of the country, with nobody ever going ashore once they had boarded, so the economic advantages could be spread in a way that suits the "levelling up" agenda beloved of progressive political parties. The only trouble is that you could hardly call such a huge static attraction a "cruise" and it clearly would need some new terminology to be devised by the marketing folk.
Sadly, while it would tick so many boxes by answering current troubles, the climate fanatics would remain unsatisfied that by going nowhere, the planet is, in any way, being saved. My advice would be to keep eating the turnips.