Cruise ships ought to be the first candidate for a luxury tax to pay for marine vehicle electrification. There are many candidate battery technologies which seem well-suited for this application.
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.
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.
Hoboken, New Jersey and Red Hook, Brooklyn are roughly the same distance from the city.
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.
It seems that the externalities of this decision need to be accounted for in law.
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.