Why methane is bad

Earthjustice represented tribal and conservation citizen groups in a lawsuit against the rollback — and won. On November 2, , the EPA proposed new rules for methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. These represent a significant step toward reigning in harmful pollution, including methane and other hazardous air pollutants, from fossil fuel production. Earthjustice will continue to work with the EPA to ensure that the agency issues strong final rules for the oil and gas industry.

Earthjustice will continue to partner with communities on the frontlines of methane pollution, who view these government safeguards as vital tools in their fight for the very air they breathe.

Below are the stories of communities across the country who are fighting alongside Earthjustice to protect themselves against oil and gas industry pollution. Bob Arrington is a native born Coloradoan and, although retired, keeps his professional engineer status active. There was a time, he remembers, when the oil and gas industry coexisted more peacefully with Coloradoans. One of his first jobs out of the University of Colorado was designing air pollution control equipment for industrial, chemical and power plants.

Two of the most important things to Barnesville, Ohio resident Terri Schumacher are her faith and her grandchildren, including her two-year-old granddaughter who lives with her. But keeping up with her granddaughter has gotten more difficult in recent years. She uses an inhaler and has had increased difficulty breathing ever since the oil and gas industry began operating nearby, prompting her to participate in a Yale University study monitoring her indoor and outdoor air quality.

You are accountable for that. I firmly believe that. Maybe not in this life—but one day we have to answer. All we are asking for is oversight, for protection against the hazards and the problems.

We will support the industry. Their hope is this convention would be more widely accepted among policymakers. The effort has gained urgency since the United States has become a large natural-gas-producing nation. Its emissions of methane between and have fallen by 15 percent, according to U. EPA, though some studies have suggested that methane inventories may be faulty. If the proposed nomenclature change is adopted by the United Nations, which collects greenhouse gas inventories from nations every year, it could change the optics of the climate change reductions nations are implementing, said Bryce Payne, director of science and technology at Gas Safety Inc.

At present, nations report methane emissions in terms of CO2 equivalents, using GWP as the conversion factor. Payne and two other scientists wrote a letter to the U.

This would allow quicker curbs on methane, they wrote. Identifying super-emitters is about to get a lot easier. The Unep report says the fossil fuel industry has the greatest potential for low-cost methane cuts. Plugging leaks in oil and gas wells and along production and transmission lines would significantly cut methane emissions at little to no cost, it concludes.

Many of the reductions could quickly pay for themselves because reducing leaks means more gas available for sale. But the report warns the continued expansion of the use of natural gas is not compatible with keeping warming to 1.

The waste sector could cut its methane emissions by improving the disposal of sewage around the world. Improving the management of rice paddies has the potential to reduce emissions from agriculture but the report says the biggest generators of agricultural methane - livestock - are harder to abate. There is little scope for technical solutions, it concludes, so the effort needs to be focused on reducing food waste and loss, improving livestock management and encouraging consumers to adopt what the report calls "healthier diets" - those with a lower meat and dairy content.

Because of methane's contribution to the formation of ozone, up to a quarter of a million premature deaths could be avoided worldwide under the most aggressive emission abatement efforts. This attempt to focus on the issue of methane is very welcome, said Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at Oxford University, provided it does not distract from the need to reduce CO2 emissions to net zero as soon as possible. This study by the Livestock and Manure Management Component, part of CCAC, focused on the global challenge of reducing climate emissions from livestock while improving food security and The Global Methane Assessment shows that human-caused methane emissions can be reduced by up to 45 per cent this decade.

Such reductions would avoid nearly 0. Skip to main content. You are here Home Science What are short-lived climate pollutants? Your comment. Related resources. Teenstra, T. Vellinga, N. Aektasaeng, W. Amatayakul, A.