Canada's westernmost province unveiled plans on Tuesday to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent by 2020, saying the public was demanding action now on climate change. British Columbia's measures will include tougher emissions rules for new cars, a new low-carbon fuel standard, and require new coal-fired power plants to run cleaner and have 100 percent carbon sequestration.

The Pacific coast province's growing oil and gas industry will also be required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions back to the levels it had in 2000 by 2016 and enact zero-flaring requirements. "Climate change is real and British Columbians are telling us we must do more as a government and as individuals," Premier Gordon Campbell said in a statement.

The announcement by the country's third most populous province comes a week after Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned that Canada's greenhouse gas emissions would continue to soar over the next few years. Harper's minority federal Conservative government promised last year it would cap greenhouse gas emissions by major polluters, but not until sometime between 2020 and 2025.

In the speech to open a new session of the British Columbia legislature, Campbell's Liberal government said that "voluntary regimes" designed to reduce emissions in Canada have not worked. "If we fail to act aggressively and shoulder our responsibility, we know what our children can expect -- shrinking glaciers and snow packs, drying lakes and streams, and changes in the ocean's chemistry," the government said in the Throne Speech, announcing its policies for the session.

Campbell said the province will set interim targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses in 2012 and 2016, and enact a longer-term target for 2050. The new tailpipe standards for cars will be phased in between 2009 and 2016 with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from autos by 30 percent. Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gasses blamed for climate change.

Campbell said British Columbia wants to work with state officials the US West Coast on a co-ordinated program to reduce emissions and he hoped to have a meeting with those states' governors this spring.
(Por Allan Dowd, Planet Ark, 15/02/2007)