The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is making plans to drastically diminish emissions in his city and improve air quality—and quality of life—for big-city Brits.

Londoners who love their cars (old clunkers, in particular) will have to trade in their lemons, or make newly-required improvements to their polluting vehicles to meet Livingstone’s high standards.

 

The so-called Low Emission Zone (LEZ) will encompass most of central London, and take effect beginning on February 4, 2008. The Mayor plans a phased introduction of penalties for polluting forms of transport, to be completed by 2012, when London will host the Olympic Games. (The Mayor aims to make the 2012 Games the “greenest Olympics in history.”) Most cars and motorcycles won’t be affected, but “older diesel-engine lorries, buses, coaches, large vans, minibuses and other heavy vehicles” will have to tidy up their belching tailpipes.

 

According to a press release by the Mayor’s office:

 

The Mayor’s office also reports that “almost two thirds of particulate matter and half of the emissions of oxides of nitrogen (two of the key pollutants of concern in London) are from road transport.”

 

The penalties for failing to meet new emissions standards are steep. A fee of £200 (about $400) per driving day will be assessed to non-compliant vehicles, and overdue penalties are as high as £1,000. Although the cost to human health and the environment is, of course, the most staggering, the British Pound will probably motivate polluters to clean up their act more than their nagging conscience.

 

Mayor Livingstone has proven himself as an eco-savvy environmental leader, having sponsored several other notable crusades for the environment, like a car-free shopping day in London and discussions about how climate change is “caused by the richest nations, [but] felt first and hardest by the poorest nations. We think it’s blimey brilliant.

 

Photo via flickr by grewlike & dionc.