Tories deliver clean-air plan

The Conservatives released the centrepiece of their ?made-in-Canada? environment agenda Thursday ? a Clean Air Act that would cut greenhouse gas emissions in half, but not until 2050.

The bill, aimed at dispelling the notion that Tories are soft on the environment, sets no short-term targets for cutting greenhouse emissions. In the long term, it says the government will seek to cut emissions by 45 to 65 per cent by 2050.
In the interim, the government will set so-called ?intensity targets? which would require industry to reduce the amount of energy used per unit of production, without placing a hard cap on emissions.
Regulations for large polluters would begin in 2010 and the government is giving itself until 2020 to set national emissions-cutting targets for the pollutants that cause smog.