Cruise-Ship-Industry.com – Citation:
“In absolute terms, the report said that Spain, Italy and Greece, closely followed by France and Norway, are the European countries most exposed to SOx air pollution from cruise vessels, while Barcelona, Palma (Maj) and Venice are the most impacted European port cities, followed by Civitavecchia and Southampton. These countries are more exposed because they are major tourist destinations, but also because they have less stringent marine sulfur fuel standards, which allows cruise ships to burn the dirtiest most sulfurous fuel all along their coastlines, T&E claimed.”
My thoughts on this:
Where are the regulators? And if they DO regulate emmissions strictly, what would this mean for their respective Shipping (not just Cruising) industries?
Here my question at governments and political leaders: Are you willing to bear the political and economic costs of regulating emmissions or not?! And to the activists and advocates a similar question: What and how much are you willing to sacrifice? At the end of the day the trade-off is straight-forward… Unfortunately, the decision and implications are not.
Simple reality here: Emmissions can be regulated, at least at the national level. Expecting self-regulation of a profit-oriented industry and collective action by price-sensitive hedonistic consumers are unrealistic and serve mainly populism and sensationalism.