Minding Methane
September 9th, 2010 by Armond Cohen, Executive Director
Two major pieces of unfinished business on the global atmospheric pollution agenda could be addressed through a single strategy: cut methane emissions. In an era where so many climate initiatives face fierce opposition, methane mitigation is low-hanging fruit.
The first issue is ground-level ozone. As a 2008 report by the UK Royal Society concluded,
In large areas of the industrialised and developing world, ground level O3 is one of the most pervasive of the global air pollutants, with impacts on human health, food production and the environment even at current ambient concentrations of 35-40 parts per billion. . . . Existing emission controls are insufficient to reduce current background O3 concentrations to levels acceptable for human health and environmental protection . . . [A new framework must] reduce both background and peak O3, at global, regional and national scales.
