http://ca.news.yahoo.com/010611/5/5z1a.html Monday June 11 5:00 PM EST Canada Pledges Kyoto Support, to Chop Emissions By Julie Remy TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada announced a 10-year plan to slash automotive emissions on Monday in an effort to reduce the greenhouse gases and meet its commitment to the Kyoto treaty on global warming. During a summit in Toronto on urban pollution, Canada said it would invest more than C$109 million ($72 million) on public transit, promoting low-emission vehicles and increased fuel efficiency, and developing cleaner alternative power sources. Environment Minister David Anderson signed an agreement with the Canadian automotive industry to make a new generation of cleaner vehicles, starting this year. An industry official said Canada's entire annual production of about 1.5 million vehicles would be affected. But critics dismissed Ottawa's announcements on the grounds that Canada has also said it will co-operate with the U.S. President George W. Bush on developing oil and natural gas reserves for the energy-hungry U.S. market. "All of this is completely irrelevant if Canada plans to pull out of the Kyoto project and go along with Bush's continental energy plan," said Peter Tabuns, executive director for Greenpeace Canada. "Kyoto is dead as far as Canada is concerned," he said. He said Canada would miss its targets by 44 percent if it increases oil production -- due to the pollution during the extraction process. Anderson said the voluntary reduction of hydrocarbons and oxides -- which cause smog and are linked to climate change -- would reduce emissions levels by up to 70 percent. He blamed the narrow approach of the European Union to limit the Kyoto protocol during the last round of negotiations in The Hague last November for the current problems. "I urge the European Union to take advantage of today's renewed expression of engagement by the United States to seriously reexamine the positions that prevented us from reaching an agreement -- and let me remind you that that was before Mr. Bush became president for the United States," he said. Bush on Monday pledged to use science and diplomacy to fight global warming, but offered no mandatory targets to contain the problem. But Anderson told reporters that Canada was committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to 6 percent below 1990 levels, as agreed in the Kyoto protocol signed in 1997. "The two items are not necessarily contradictory... We are on to meet our Kyoto target," Anderson said. Copyright � 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Copyright � 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
