By Drew Shindell for The Conversation.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for West Virginia News Service

The U.S. and European Union are working on a pledge to cut methane emissions by at least 30% this decade, President Joe Biden announced on Sept. 17, 2021, and he urged countries around the world to join in ahead of the U.N. climate summit later this year.

The move is a big deal for efforts to slow climate change - and also for health. While methane isn't as abundant as carbon dioxide, it's a far more potent greenhouse gas at warming the planet and also a source of unhealthy air pollution.

Why is methane a concern, and is this goal enough?

Methane emissions have been going up very quickly, and research shows they need to drop by nearly half by 2030 to meet the Paris climate agreement goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) on the lowest-cost path. That means the world has a rapid U-turn to make.

The new pledge, if taken up widely and implemented, would dramatically change the world's methane trajectory. It's an ambitious minimum target, and ideally the 30% will have to be substantially exceeded to increase the chances of methane following a 1.5 C path.

The good news is that the world has a lot to gain by cutting these emissions.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, but it's also a precursor of surface ozone, which is a toxic air pollutant. So, reducing methane improves the quality of the air we breathe at the same time that it reduces climate change, and the results are almost immediate.

Methane is also valuable. If you capture methane from a landfill, you have a source of income right there. Capture it from leaking natural gas pipelines, and it pays for itself, because that's the whole point of these pipelines - they transport methane as natural gas.

With the technology already available today, the world could cut methane emissions from fossil fuels, agriculture and rotting waste by 45% within a decade. That would avoid 0.3 degrees Celsius (0.5 F) of warming, which might not sound like much, but it's one-fifth of the Paris climate agreement budget of 1.5 C.

So, you get climate benefits, you get public health benefits and it's also a financial win for the companies capturing the methane.

It's not like this is rocket science. A large part of the methane being released is from natural gas pipelines and storage, oil and gas pumping and landfills - and those are all problems companies know how to fix. Furthermore, recent satellite and aircraft data suggest that many sources have larger emissions than once thought, especially in the energy sector. This suggests that actively working on methane reductions may bring more benefits than initial estimates and could put countries well over the 30% goal of the pledge.

How does cutting methane improve health?

Methane causes ground-level ozone, which contributes to a lot of respiratory problems, including asthma in children, respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorders. There's pretty robust evidence that it can also exacerbate cardiovascular disease.

Both methane and ozone are also greenhouse gases that cause global warming, which creates more health risks, particularly through heat exposure.

We looked at medical research and modeling, and used that to figure out what's at stake. We found that for every million tons of methane emitted, about 1,430 people die prematurely, there are about 4,000 asthma-related emergencies and 300 million work hours are lost to the health effects. To put that into context, around 370 million tons of methane are released annually due to human activities.

If you reduce methane emissions in 2022, you'll see the ozone response in 2022, whereas you have to wait to see the climate effects until the climate system adjusts over at least a decade.

What's causing methane emissions to rise so quickly?

Global emissions are going up. That's easy to measure by chemical sampling of the air, and satellites can monitor large methane sources. But which sources are most responsible is a tougher question.

Global methane emissions were fairly level about 15 to 20 years ago, and then they started creeping up. Now, especially over the past five years or so, they've been rising at a fast rate.

Some studies point to the rise of hydraulic fracturing, which quickly expanded gas production and roughly parallels the recent methane increase. Others say livestock and the increasing global demand for meat played a big role. Some point to natural sources - particularly wetlands in the tropics responding to climate change.

The most likely scenario is that it's a combination of all three.

The bottom line is that the overall methane emissions have to be lowered to slow climate change. If the increase is coming from fossil fuel or waste or livestock, then countries need to go after the human sources. If it's coming from natural systems that are responding to climate change, they still have to go after those human sources of methane. Cutting methane emissions is the strongest leveragefwe to slow those feedbacks down.

If cutting methane pays for itself, and the technology exists, why isn't more being done?

The oil and gas industry itself is divided on methane. Many of the big companies supported the U.S. methane emissions rules that were set by the Obama administration - and later rolled back by the Trump administration - because they know capturing methane pays for itself. It's not an onerous economic burden on them, and supporting it can improve the image of the industry.

For small operators, however, the upfront costs of equipment and the need to hire labor to inspect the pipelines may be harder.

For example, if a company is going to repair a pipeline, it can close off a section, bring in a compressor, and pump all of the excess gas farther down the line before starting to work on it. Doing that requires getting a compressor and having the trucks to move it and the staff to maintain it. A lot of studies have found that these investments pay for themselves in a few years because of the value of the methane saved. But many small operators find it simpler to just vent the gas into the atmosphere when they want to work on the pipe.

A similar problem exists with landfills and waste. As organic matter like food waste decomposes, it releases methane. Many landfills in developed countries already capture some of that methane gas. But many developing countries don't have managed landfills or even trash pickup, making it impossible to capture the biogas.

Our report lists a few recommendations, in addition to technical solutions, that can be used for landfills everywhere, including better waste sorting so organic material is kept out of landfills and used for compost instead, and reducing food waste overall. That can also reduce hunger if unused foods are gathered and distributed.

Agriculture also has some straightforward solutions. Eating a healthy diet that, for many people, means cutting out excess red meat would go a long way in reducing the amount of livestock being produced for slaughter. These kinds of health and food security programs could boost the total methane reductions well beyond the 30% goal. Encouraging changes in food consumption can be politically dicey, but this is a huge emissions source. We're not going to keep warming under 1.5 C without dealing with it.

Drew Shindell wrote this article for The Conversation.


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School buses are getting cleaner in Washington state after this year's legislative session.

Lawmakers in Olympia passed House Bill 1368, which will fund the purchase of zero emission school buses.

Rep. Tana Senn, D-Mercer Island, said the program is getting off the ground quickly.

"As we work towards that long-term goal of all new school buses being zero emission, we're kick-starting this year with $40 million in grants to school districts in overburdened communities," Senn explained.

Going forward, Senn noted school districts will have to purchase zero-emission vehicles once the total cost of ownership is equal to or lower than the cost of diesel vehicles. The state is leveraging the state's Climate Commitment Act resources to fund the transition of its 10,000 school buses.

Devin Denney, director of transportation for Highline Public Schools in King County, which already has electric school buses in its fleet, said he has driven the electric buses and talked about some of their benefits from a driver's perspective.

"You're not competing against that engine noise, the kids aren't competing against the engine noise," Denney observed. "It's a much quieter bus all the way around. The major advantage, of course, is that there's no tailpipe emissions with an electric bus, so our kids' health is better protected."

Senn emphasized health studies have shown there are negative health effects from diesel vehicles for kids, and it is easy to understand why.

"If you think about kids waiting to get on their bus in front of an elementary school and you have this line of buses idling, letting out diesel fumes right at the height of a little child, it becomes obvious that this is probably not the most healthy thing for our children," Senn added.


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Today, in honor of Earth Day, climate advocates are asking California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom to rally around a plan to put a $15 billion bond measure on the November ballot.

If passed, the bond measure would fund a range of climate resiliency measures.

Sam Hodder, president and CEO of the Save the Redwoods League, said March was the tenth month in a row to break monthly heat records.

"I think Earth Day is a terrific opportunity for the broader public to recognize how nature is critical for resilience, for our quality of life, for our mental and physical health, and for our communities more broadly," Hodder outlined.

Two similar bills to put a bond measure on the ballot are under consideration in Sacramento, Assembly Bill 1567 and Senate Bill 867, but they have been stalled since last summer. The bond would finance many programs, including some to restore wetlands that guard against sea-level rise, and to remove dead wood in forests to guard against mega-fires, which Hodder noted have killed 20% of the giant sequoias in recent years.

Opponents pointed out the state already faces a budget deficit and cannot afford to take on more debt. But only 5% of California's old-growth coastal redwoods remain, mostly due to aggressive logging many decades ago.

Hodder argued the giant trees can be critical ingredients in the fight against climate change because they trap so much carbon.

"Redwood forests sequester more carbon per acre than any other forest system in the world," Hodder emphasized. "We have the opportunity to transition the redwood forest from something that is vulnerable to climate change to something that is helping to solve and address the climate crisis."

Experts blame climate change for California's wild weather over the past few years, which has been marked by extreme drought, devastating fires and flooding rain.

A new report from the National Wildlife Federation warns that the effects of climate change in the Quad Cities, along the Iowa-Illinois border, will be severe.

But researchers got the public involved in studying to find ways to head off some of the most pressing concerns.

The report says climate change means a warmer, wetter future for the Quad Cities, which straddle the Mississippi River in Iowa and Illinois.

But rather than repeat what experts have already been saying about drastic flooding along the Big Muddy, Prairie Rivers Network River Health and Resiliency Organizer Nina Struss said researchers and Quad Cities residents brainstormed solutions to tackle the effects of climate change.

"Flooding and flash flooding were the top concerns," said Struss. "Extreme heat was also a big concern, as well as drought and other extreme weather events."

Researchers combined that information with hard science at the University of Illinois to create 3D models depicting what climate-induced flooding along the Mississippi could look like in the future.

The survey also asked people to identify which geographical areas and populations are most at risk from the effects of climate change, and worked with the community on solutions to mitigate some of them.

Struss said this research proposes what are known as nature-based solutions to combat the effects of climate change - restoring, preserving and even expanding existing ecosystems, like wetlands and tree canopies. But creating more eco-friendly infrastructure, too.

"Can we work to maybe have our pavements that we're putting in be more permeable, so that they can absorb that water and have that higher water-holding capacity?" said Struss. "Can we focus on areas to plant more native plants that have stronger root systems, versus ones that have shorter root systems, to help with that water-holding capacity?"

Struss said this research isn't a one-off. It will continue to change, she said, as the climate changes, the needs become more clear, and the effects more drastic.

She said progress in addressing climate change relies on more research, education and funding.




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