If you ignore the embarrassing, pig-headed inaction of our federal government, and the when-convenient attitude of the province toward tackling climate change, it’s a pretty exciting time to be green in Toronto.

The city’s recently released climate change and sustainable energy action plan contains ambitious targets for squashing the amount of greenhouse gases we produce. City staff are trumpeting an even more recently released sustainable transportation plan, which actually focuses on walking, cycling and taking public transit over cars. Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health has even brought forward a report showing the connection between traffic pollution and health (that’s 440 deaths a year thanks to vehicle exhaust). Not since the late 1980s, when acid rain was all the rage, have green issues enjoyed such a surge in popularity.

How do we explain, then, that when it comes time to cut costs, funding for bike lanes — simple and relatively inexpensive infrastructure that will help people get out of their cars — still gets the short shrift? Since I last complained about this (less than a year ago, during debate over the 2007 capital budget), council has renewed its commitment to its admittedly fledgling bike plan, which includes building a 1,000km network of bike lanes, bike paths and bike routes throughout the city. The city’s climate-change framework, unanimously approved just this summer, sets a new goal for completing the bike plan by 2012. A mere four months later, however, the funds required to meet this goal are conspicuously absent from the budget. It’s enough to make you wonder if all the environmental talk that’s been taking place lately is just that: talk.

It’s strange to hear our city councillors claim that they’re going to make Toronto a green leader in one breath, and then treat cycling as an issue that doesn’t really have to be taken seriously in the next. When, on Nov. 14, Councillor Gord Perks moved to add $17.9 million to the cycling infrastructure budget over the next five years so that it would be possible for the city to meet its own goals, the budget committee shot him down. It’s as though there is a disconnect between plans that are approved and the money that is then dedicated to implementing them.

Agreed, Toronto continues to face troubling times financially, but somehow the city has found the money to pay for other, much more expensive projects. Take the Dufferin Street extension, priced at $32 million, or take a $35.6 million loan the budget committee recently agreed to provide for the construction of a new conference centre at the CNE. This isn’t to say that these projects aren’t necessarily worthwhile, but to prove that when council really wants something, it can often find the funds for it.

For many environmental advocates, council’s failure to fulfill its own goals on the bike plan is enough to take the wind out of the sails of the city’s burgeoning green movement. Time for councillors to put our money where their mouth is.

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