It's official: after a fiercely disputed electoral battle, London emerged with a shiny new mayor last Friday. Incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone was defeated by a Conservative candidate by the name of Boris Johnson, a name that, more often than not, is followed by attributes such as "colorful" and "eccentric".

Now, Mr. Johnson has some big shoes to fill, however colorfully, given former mayor Livingstone's environmental track record. Livingstone was, after all, the mayor that introduced such innovative measures like the congestion charge, planned to introduce the £25 gas-guzzler tax and received the Friends of Earth "Greenest Mayor" seal of approval. So where does the new mayor stand in terms of environmental policy? According to his own environmental manifesto, here are some of Mr. Johnson's proposals:

• Cut London's CO2 emissions by 60% by 2025
• Oppose the expansion of Heathrow airport
• Promote hybrid buses
• Make London a genuinely cycle-friendly city
• Protect the green belt and protect gardens against development
• Promote "schemes that pay Londoners to recycle"
• Ban plastic bags

And while these are, indeed, encouraging goals, we are slightly less enthusiastic about the fact that Boris plans to scrap Livingstone's gas-guzzler tax and question the expansion of the Congestion Charge by reopening public consultation. And let's not forget that this is also the man who wanted to "get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what they like", in regards to Jamie's school lunch crusade. Environmental group Friends of Earth, who rated Johnson's greenness a 7 out of 10 (Livingstone got 9), took particular issue with his plans to relieve congestion by "re-phasing traffic lights":

Johnson over-simplifies the situation when he claims that emissions from road traffic will be dealt with just by re-phasing traffic lights. To do this would not address the large climate change effect of traffic and the scale of the task needed to deal with this. Emissions from road traffic need drastic attention not fiddling with red lights. -- Friends of Earth

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It is doubtful, indeed, that this will lead to any improvement in traffic emissions as Johnson claims, and is an insufficient measure to address the problem, if it doesn't, in fact, have the entirely opposite effect. So while we take a wait and see approach to the new mayor's plans (and shed a tear for Livingstone), we hope that his transportation policies will mature to become an effective instrument towards London's environmental goals.