Biden's world climate summit must include a pledge to tackle methane emissions
President Biden has come out swinging on climate change. In his first months as president, his administration has rejoined the Paris Agreement, appointed domestic and international climate czars, and this week proposed an "American Jobs Plan" with sweeping investments in greener infrastructure. All of this, however, is prologue to the highly anticipated April 22 World Climate Summit at the White House, where he is expected to unveil the United States' ambitious new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.
The new NDC presents the Biden administration with a clear opportunity to take up the mantel on global climate leadership, and to send a clear signal out across the world that keeping temperature rise well below 2 degrees C is the right goal. To do so, the NDC must include aggressive reductions of methane pollution.
Methane pollution, commonly emitted during oil and gas production, as well as from agriculture, coal mines, and landfills, warms the planet 80 times more than carbon pollution over 20 years. It accounts for a quarter of today's global warming, and its levels in the atmosphere are surging. But there's a clear opportunity to change that. Rapidly and dramatically cutting methane pollution is both critically needed and technologically attainable and presents a clear opportunity for an early climate victory on the road to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.
A recent study found that the U.S. can cut methane emissions from the oil gas sector by up to 65 percent with currently available technologies. By strengthening requirements to find and fix methane leaks at oil and gas facilitates and replacing outdated equipment with zero-emitting technology, the U.S. could cut methane emissions by 7.8 million tons, the equivalent of shutting down 170 coal-fired power plants or taking 140 million gas-powered cars off the road. In addition to the climate impacts, strong methane standards would provide immediate relief to more than 12 million people living within a half mile of gas and oil facilities, including 1 million Black people - all while creating thousands of new jobs.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-world-climate-summit-must-include-a-pledge-to-tackle-methane-emissions/ar-BB1fgMrC?li=BBnbfcQ&ocid=hplocalnews
= new reply since forum marked as read
