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VANCOUVER — As Throne Speeches go, the one delivered in the British Columbia Legislature this year by Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campagnolo could only be described as electrifying.
In the middle of her address the elegant former broadcaster who speaks with a carefully measured tone and whose stiff posture is reflected in her native Tsimsean name, "Person Who Sits High," veered from the usual political banalities and went straight to the heart of one of the most troubling problems of our age.
"The Kyoto treaty, which is now in place, just came into force two years ago this Friday," she said, her clear, sharp voice capturing the attention of the entire legislature and those watching on television.
"Little has been done to seriously address this problem, which is literally threatening life on Earth as we know it.
Hudson Bay Mountain overlooks the Bulkley River, a world-renowned fly fishing river and part of the Skeena River system.
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Since 1997, greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to grow here in British Columbia and across Canada. Voluntary regimes have not worked.
In 2007, British Columbia will take concerted provincial action to halt and reverse the growth in greenhouse gases," she said, looking out across the hushed legislative chamber.
Sitting in the front benches just to her right, nodding in affirmation, was Premier Gordon Campbell, the man who had shaped the words she was delivering -- and who at that moment was signalling a dramatic U-turn for his government.
For the past decade British Columbia has been an energy pig, with greenhouse-gas emissions soaring. Now Mr. Campbell is promising to apply the brakes and reduce those emissions to 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. That ambitious target would outpace even California, where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger aims to cap that state's greenhouse-gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020.
The question is, can Mr. Campbell deliver?
B.C., birthplace of Greenpeace, a province where people embrace nature so fervently even loggers call themselves environmentalists, might already seem to be the greenest place in Canada.
But the statistics tell a different story, a story about how a booming economy and a growing population has put B.C. on what the Suzuki Foundation calls "a torrid pace to catch up" to the worst greenhouse-gas offenders in the country.
From its booming energy sector (fugitive emissions up 96 per cent; mining emissions up 186 per cent) its road transportation (which has so clogged major highways a $1-billion-plus expansion is under way) British Columbia is pumping more than 66 million tonnes of greenhouse gas into the air yearly.
Promising to stop is an important step, but at the moment B.C. is like a glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet, talking loudly about going on a diet while loading up at the dessert tray.
Since 1990, the province's greenhouse-gas emissions overall have soared by 35 per cent -- and this despite having in place since 2004 a provincial plan to reduce carbon output.
In the Throne Speech, Ms. Campagnolo acknowledged that B.C., and the country as a whole, have reached a crisis point.
"The rate of atmospheric warming over the last 50 years is faster than at any time in the past 1,000 years. The science is clear. It leaves no room for procrastination. Global warming is real," she said.
"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. Our wildlife, plant life, and ocean life will all be hurt in ways we cannot know and dare not imagine."
It was dramatic stuff and it drew news media attention from New York to London, inspiring comparisons to the greening of California under Mr. Schwarzenegger.
As if to underscore that connection, Mr. Campbell flew to California this month for a photo op with the governor, emerging from a meeting to hint at a "hydrogen-highway" from B.C. to California and to say "concrete results" in the fight against greenhouse-gas emissions will soon be seen.
But getting from here to there is not going to be an easy commute.
A few weeks after Ms. Campagnolo's address, the government delivered an energy plan that seemed to send conflicting signals.
"Over all it's hard to reconcile the energy plan with the visionary Throne Speech," said Ian Bruce, climate-change specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation.
