$300 Million Megayacht Kaos Vandalized Again Because "Billionaires Shouldn't Exist"

Kaos was delivered by Oceanco in 2017 as Jubilee, a turnkey fully custom commission measuring 110 meters (361 feet) in total length, to the former Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad bin Abdullah bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani. He had been shopping for a superyacht for years before he came to Oceanco with a very specific brief, and he waited about as many years before being able to take delivery.

The Sheikh didn't enjoy it for long, though. In 2019, Walmart billionaire heiress Nancy Walton Laurie bought it as a replacement for Secret, the smaller superyacht she had just sold. Jubilee went through an extensive refit that same year, emerging out of the shed as Kaos, a floating palace designed with ultimate comfort, luxury, and impressive performance in mind.

In 2023, Kaos has made headlines not for these accomplishments, which are nothing short of impressive, but for the way it's been turned into a symbol of dangerous capitalism. Kaos is now a symbol of the plague that's killing our planet, both through climate change and social inequality.

Kaos has been vandalized again, for the second time in as many months, and only weeks after it had emerged out of repairs following the first attack. Civil disobedience groups Extinction Rebellion Spain and Scientific Rebellion have claimed the second attack, which took place in the Port Vell marina in Barcelona, Spain. The first one also occurred in Spain, in Ibiza.

An expensive case of deja vu

Based on footage released by the two groups of activists (or eco-terrorists, according to the latest legal stipulations in Spain), two men simply walked up to Kaos carrying concealed fire extinguishers filled with red paint. Once they arrived at the beach club platform at the stern of the megayacht, they took out their weapons of choice and covered the hull in red spray paint.

A panicked security guard can be seen yelling for backup and asking someone to call the police as he's keeping an eye on the very calm activists who, now that their job is finished, are standing and holding a banner reading "Billionaires shouldn’t exist." If you know little of the Extinction Rebellion movement or the activity of similar civil disobedience groups, it might seem unclear how this message ties in to the climate change issue. Extinction Rebellion Spain explains it in detail on their social media.

Both activists were eventually taken into custody. Kaos will have to go back for repairs, which will undoubtedly be expensive. When you own a $300 million megayacht, you can't go for easy or cheap fixes without devaluing the asset, and we already know from the July attack that spray paint doesn't wash off with a water jet.

A similar scenario played out in July this year when activists for Futuro Vegetal, another Spain-based group that tackles issues like climate change through instances of eco-terrorism and a vegetarian lifestyle, splashed black and red paint over the side of the hull. The war cry uttered on that occasion was "Eat the rich." On the second attack, activists urged followers to "Make them pay," with “them" being the world's billionaires.

"Billionaires shouldn’t exist," so seize their superyachts

This brings us to the purpose of deliberate, intentional, planned destruction of private property, which is what this act was. As the activist group explains, many of the world's ills, from climate change to social inequality, fall onto the one-percenters and their outrageous lifestyle.

With their excessive private jet use and superyacht ownership, the world's mega-rich have a carbon footprint a million times bigger than the sum of average-salaried folks. To add insult to injury, the same mega-rich are constantly posing as eco-activists, asking the Average Joe and Jane to cut back on their emissions by flying less, not going on cruises, or ditching their car on the commute to work.

Because this old message has failed so far to return any concrete results, the activists are leaning into eco-terrorism to get the attention of local governments.

With the (re-)vandalization of Kaos, they're asking all governments to tax the rich for their polluting ways by "forcing" them to contribute to Climate Loss and Damage Funds for the most affected towns and areas. The reasoning is that if the rich will have to pay for the damage they do to the environment – hefty sums, not small figures like they pay today for carbon offsetting – they won't pollute as much.

The other thing the activists are asking is even more drastic: "Ban, seize, and convert megayachts." That includes Kaos, which should be rendered illegal to own privately and should instead be repurposed to serve rescue missions for migrants who are risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean.

"The annual maintenance cost of the 6,000 largest megayachts in the world could wipe out the debt of the so-called developing countries," the group says. Technically, there aren't 6,000 megayachts in the world since that figure is under 100, but the message is the same: people are dying of hunger while the rich live it up onboard their fancy boats.

Nancy Laurie, the owner of Kaos, refrained from commenting on the first act of vandalism. She'll probably take the same route now that it's happened again.

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CLIMATE KAOS

Activists from Scientist Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion Spain sprayed the Walton family's $300 million mega yacht with biodegradable paint to denounce billionaires' enormous impact on the #ClimateCrisis.#MakeThemPayhttps://t.co/4EBjc8SK3c

— Scientist Rebellion (@ScientistRebel1) September 8, 2023