Cruise ship pollution in Europe
[3] All cruise ships together also accounted for 15% of the nitrogen oxide (NOx) particles emitted by all of Europe's passenger vehicles, and released large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), phosphorus (P4), soot, heavy metals, and other particulates into the atmosphere as well.
[3][4] Modern cruise ships evolved from ocean liners, which were the most common mode of transportation between Europe and the Americas until the rise of commercial aviation in the 1950s.
To survive, the sector began to transform its ocean liners into cruise ships in the mid-1960s by attracting passengers by focusing the voyage on recreation and sightseeing, and less on getting travelers from A to B.
A University of British Columbia scientist also questioned some of the report's more drastic claims but agreed with the group's general conclusions about cruise shipping from an air pollution and climate change perspective.
[1] In addition to causing the third-worst air pollution in any port city in Europe,[3] cruise ships passing through the Giudecca Canal damage building foundations of historical Venice, a World Heritage Site, as well as blocking the view of inhabitants and other tourists.
[12] A week after the 12 January 2012 Costa Concordia disaster, UNESCO urged Venetian authorities to restrict the future access of cruise ships to Venice and other Italian ports with vulnerable cultural historic architecture.
[12][14] In subsequent years, the city of Venice, for whom tourism is of critical importance, tried to reach a compromise with cruise lines, but in August 2014 the Italian government interfered by prohibiting ships surpassing the weight of 96,000 tonnes from getting near the historic centre in 2015.
Amongst other things, it prohibited any kind of dumping within three nautical miles of a coastline, and set limits on sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions from ships.
[16] In international law, the maximum sulfur oxide concentration in cruise ship emissions at full sea is 0.5% from 1 January 2020 onwards.
[18] While docking, berthing or mooring in populated places for several hours, cruise ships such as the Harmony of the Seas are required to use auxiliary engines that burn low sulfur fuel, or use abatement technologies, in order to reduce the amount of air pollution they cause to the detriment of local inhabitants.
[7] In 2016, Princess Cruises (a British-American subsidiary of Carnival Corporation that operates in Europe and North America) was condemned by the Court of Miami to pay 40 million U.S. dollars in damages for illegally dumping oil at sea in order to cut waste disposal costs.
Initially, it was sued only for dumping 4,227 gallons (16,000 litres) of oil-contaminated waste about 20 miles (32 kilometres) off the coast of England on 26 August 2013 using a "magic pipe" from the Caribbean Princess.
[23] In July 2018, for the first time in the French Mediterranean, the captain of a cruise ship, MS Azura, stood trial for breaking fuel emission limits in the port of Marseille.
[24] The relocation of cruise ship passenger terminals away from densely populated areas to near surrounding towns or villages has been proposed in ports such as Venice, Antwerp and Amsterdam (Piet Heinkade), in order to reduce the number of local inhabitants exposed to air pollution (as well as spreading mass tourism more evenly).
However, this has been met with protests from the surrounding towns and villages, who don't want the pollution and overtourism to spread to them instead, and the port cities themselves fear losing the economic benefits of tourism when the cruises dock too far away from where visitors will want to spend their money.
