Former Green Party leadership candidate James Cockle spoke to the council last week about his proposal.
It comes as the council works out how to achieve its net zero 2030 emissions target, which at the moment does not include cruise ships.
Mr Cockle told the Otago Daily Times it was time for a change.
Cruise ships were a blight on the environment and did not deliver the tourism benefits the companies trumpet.
"In fact, they're so bad that I would rather take the plane than take a cruise ship."
It was important to include cruise ship emissions in the city’s emissions targets.
"We need to count them, and actually reduce them.
"Climate change is devastating our environment. We all know we need to address this — let’s cut the easy parts of emissions.
"Nobody needs cruise ships. They're completely unnecessary, they're a luxury item."
Cruise ship passengers were "the worst type of tourists", economically and environmentally speaking.
"They're really low value — they only make up 3% of the international tourist spend [in Dunedin], but make up 9% of the total international tourist numbers.
"Even some of the excursions they do here are actually run by the cruise ships themselves, so they're taking a cut of our market."
Dunedin would be following Christchurch if it included these emissions in the inventory, he said.
Christchurch City Council resilience team leader Lisa Early said it began measuring cruise ship emissions in its inventory for this year.
"However, because there are still some difficulties in obtaining good data, the estimate of cruise ship emissions has not been included in the overall total emissions.
"We will look to do this next time as data improves."
Mr Cockle said once it learned how to cut and measure the total emissions, resources could be diverted to more environmentally friendly forms of travel, such as public passenger transport, including passenger rail.
Port Otago chief executive Kevin Winders said the port calculated cruise ship emissions from the point it took control of vessels to their departures from Port Chalmers or Dunedin.
This included the emissions during the time the ships spent in port.
"We will include this in our next emissions report; we've been pretty straightforward with the council.
"We have been called to calculate our emissions from the point in between it goes from one port to the next, but we don't think this would be best practice."
Cr Steve Walker said he enjoyed Mr Cockle’s presentation.
"Port Otago, if it truly wants to be a good corporate citizen, should absolutely be looking to reduce ship emissions.
"It could also choose to be a world leader in encouraging any ships coming to Port Chalmers to have the very latest, and highest environmental standards."
