Climate Rules Fail To Target 87% of Global Methane Emissions

Methane belched from livestock operations, bubbling from rice paddies, and seeping from landfills, coal mines, and leaking pipelines is about 25 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The world urgently needs to begin to draw down those emissions in order to limit the worst effects of climate change. But, so far, governments around the world have only made miniscule efforts to address the methane problem, even as emissions of the potent greenhouse gas continue to increase.

That is the conclusion of the first comprehensive assessment of methane policies from around the world, published in the journal One Earth today. According to the study’s findings, policies designed to cut methane emissions only cover about 13% the methane being released globally. And many of those policies don’t clamp down on emissions nearly as much as they need to, often because they are based on poor information about the real extent of the emissions problem.

“The conclusion is very surprising,” says Maria Olczak, a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London and a consultant at the Environmental Defense Fund, who served as first author on the paper. “Especially given the fact that we know exactly what we need to do in order to be closer to the trajectory that is compatible with net zero targets.”

Methane emissions are a powerful driver of climate change, but the gas doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide—methane sticks around in the atmosphere for about 12 years, while carbon dioxide can persist for centuries. That raises the imperative to cut methane emissions quickly, since fast reductions could have a big short term effect on global temperatures, giving the world more khbrknews to implement more difficult long term carbon dioxide cuts. If humanity manages to cut methane emissions by 45% by 2030, the result would avert…