US President Joe Biden has unveiled a multinational plan aiming to cut methane emissions by 30% worldwide by the end of this decade. Biden made the statement during the world’s biggest climate summit, COP26, which is currently taking place in the UK city of Glasgow. He specified that the decrease was to be ensured by an alliance of 90 states led by the US and the EU that aimed to reduce the emissions of one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
Global Methane Pledge
The alliance, known as the Global Methane Pledge, promised to introduce new regulatory measures to curb emissions of methane by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of this decade. Joined by two-thirds of the global economy and half of the top 30 major methane emitters, the pledge does sound promising.
Describing the Global Methane Pledge as “the single-most effective strategy we have to slow global warming in the near term”, Biden called for urgent action to mitigate climate change.
“Right now, we are falling short, there’s no time to hang back, sit on the fence, or argue amongst ourselves… This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes, an existential threat to human existence as we know it, and every day we delay the cost of inaction increases.”
Why is a cut in methane emissions that important?
Methane is the second most potent greenhouse gas after CO2 and it accounts for about 20% of global emissions. Methane is around 25 times stronger than CO2 in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere as it retains 84 times more heat compared to the same amount of carbon dioxide over 20 years. In the past two centuries, its concentration in the atmosphere (since pre-industrial times) has more than doubled due to human activity and it accounts for half of the 1.1 C degrees temperature rise. The good news is that methane is not retained for very long in the atmosphere as it breaks down into water and CO2 within 10 years, thus a reduction in methane emissions will translate fairly quickly into a decrease in temperature.
According to the International Energy Agency, the main natural sources of methane are wetlands and agriculture while the third source is the fossil fuel industry as methane leaks from coal mines and oil and gas drillings. Methane emissions also come from waste and biomass burning.
Criticism from environmentalists
However, climate activists have slammed Biden for failing to ensure the adoption of the promised climate-related legislation that he announced as the “most significant investment to deal with the climate crisis that any advanced nation has made, ever”. Nevertheless, environmentalists noted, the bill has stalled in Congress due to efforts by some senators.
They also criticised Biden’s administration for its reluctance to diminish oil and gas drilling in the US, noting that in the first six months of the Biden administration, about 2,500 new oil and gas permits were authorized – a figure Trump’s administration took a year to reach.
