> Cruise ships ought to be the first candidate for a luxury tax to pay for marine vehicle electrification

Tax burdens are tough to pin down. For something like cruise ship docking, the fear is losing the docking business to a neighboring port. That can change ground economics for voting families, a problem for policy makers.

State or national-level regulation is probably needed.

Add federal regulation requiring ships to simply not spew out pollution in population centers. They’ll need electric drives to navigate into major cities or they can dock in less populated areas (both of which are economic disasters for cruise companies - so obviously can’t be implemented on state level as they’d just switch destinations).

In general, yes, but New York is uniquely privileged as the most glamorous east cost destination and should just act decisively. This isn't the freight business moving to NJ and Oakland. This is bougie tourists who want to disembark straight into their destination.

> tourists who want to disembark straight into their destination

Hoboken, New Jersey and Red Hook, Brooklyn are roughly the same distance from the city.

Fair that's true, but note how the article mentioned many docking in Manhattan too. And at least in Red Hook you can truthfully say it's NYC.

Every single tax has this problem. The better alternative is that the cruise ships be held responsible for the increased rate of asthma development there. It would be interesting to see how a business that is supposed to make people feel better is going to react when there is both a public outcry and a lawsuit against them for the very thing.

Would you as a person go on a cruise when you knew it contributed directly to the asthma of others? At that point, I think going on a cruise from a different port would be the preference of others, regardless of taxes.

I'm not up to date on the subject, but I didn't know there were good battery options

There are no battery technologies which can power a cruise ship at the dock for several days at a reasonable cost and weight. The power density just isn't there, and won't be for many years.

Shore power works fine. It would be a lot simpler to just mandate it actually be used, and bar ships which don't use it from docking.

I think the best way to implement this is to use the tax money to at first pay for electric tug boats, ferries, and other smaller marine vasseles that service the city.

Later liquid battery tech could be a good way for a cruise ship to quickly refuel in port. Other grid-level battery tech might work too, but I'm actually not sure if a boat can cross the Atlantic on battery.

Another issue that no one has touched on yet is that big diesel engines don't like being stopped and started. The maintenance costs of stopping the engine each time it docks are likely worth more than the fuel it burns doing so.

It seems that the externalities of this decision need to be accounted for in law.