In some good news coming out of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, more than 100 countries have pledged to cut emissions of methane — one of the most powerful greenhouse gases — by 30% by 2030. Methane is responsible for 33% of current warming from human activities.
Led by the US and the EU, there is growing recognition that tackling methane can be a quick win in fighting the climate crisis. “We cannot wait for 2050," EU Commission leader Ursula von der Leyen told the summit. "We have to cut emissions fast."
She said cutting methane was "one of the most effective things we can do to reduce near-term global warming", calling it "the lowest hanging fruit".
The new Global Methane Pledge is focusing international attention on the main sources of methane; agriculture and oil and gas. While the COP26 announcement is more focused on reducing methane in the oil and gas sector, there is compelling science that a broader approach can bring even more benefits.
Both the recent Sixth Assessment Report from the UN IPCC and a call from leading climate scientists set out a comprehensive game plan for how and why reducing methane emissions from agriculture is a highly effective measure to reduce GHG emissions by 2030.
Why methane? Methane is 84x more powerful in trapping heat than CO2 over a 20-year period and while it dissipates in the atmosphere within 10-12 years, unlike CO2 which remains in the air for centuries, cutting methane emissions delivers a significant, immediate climate benefit.
2020 saw a record rise in methane emissions. Source: Bioscience
Where does methane come from? Globally, agriculture is the number one source at 42%, 80% of which comes from the digestive systems of cows and sheep, their manure, and fertilizer to grow feed crops. The number two source is fossil fuels at 36%, especially shale gas wells and leaks in conventional oil and gas facilities, and number three is waste dumps at 18%.
Source: FAOSTAT data. Chart: Amada44 (CC BY 3.0)
The scope of the methane problem is significant. Globally, there are over four billion ruminant livestock, (an increase of one billion in the last 20 years), and they require more resources and land than any other source of food. The chart below shows the methane footprint in the US.
Agriculture is a major source of methane emissions in the United States. The three largest sources of emissions from agriculture include manure management, enteric fermentation from domestic livestock, and rice cultivation.
So, how do we cut methane emissions effectively? A recent report by the UN Environment Programme and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition spells out how this can deliver multiple wins for people and the planet (cutting human-caused methane emissions by 45% by 2030 can prevent 225,000 premature deaths per year due to air pollution), but also barriers to action.
The report reveals the battle between the most effective solutions and the art of what is perceived to be possible, revealing some of the practical and political challenges of cutting methane to tackle the climate crisis. Cutting emissions from fossil fuel and waste dump operations can be done relatively quickly and is lower-cost. It would include sealing leaks in oil and gas installations and sending less biodegradable waste to dump sites.
Data from: UNEP/Climate and Clean Air Coalition
Meanwhile, agriculture is the number one source of methane at 42%, and this number could be low. A recent study says that methane from livestock in the US is being significantly undercounted given current measuring methods.
But the UN report suggests that agriculture can contribute only 20—25% of the reductions because of the perceived difficulty of changing our food and agriculture systems and convincing enough people to quickly adapt what they eat. Add to that the expedient inclination to tinker with the current agriculture system, like feed additives, rather than adopting wholesale changes in production systems and food choices.
The significant benefits of reform in this sector could be even greater with more ambition. “Three behavioural changes, reducing food waste and loss, improving livestock management, and the adoption of healthy diets (vegetarian or with a lower meat and dairy content) could reduce methane emissions by 65–80 Mt/yr over the next few decades,” the report says. These recommendations show the political and cultural challenges of fighting the climate crisis and the difficult, sometimes unpalatable, trade-offs involved.
The challenge is to overcome the deeply embedded cultural traditions that tend to drive our food choices and how we produce our food, never quick or politically easy. But the science is clear that we cannot meet the Paris climate goals or net zero by 2050 without changing food production and what we eat. Numerous authoritative studies show that richer nations need to significantly reduce the amount of meat and dairy to reduce global heating. Even if we were able to stop all fossil fuel GHGs today, emissions from our food system mean that we would still blow by the Paris Climate goals.
The danger is that vested interests from the fossil fuel and/or Big Food and Ag industries combined with political opportunism that weaponizes perceived threats to traditional diets and meat eating, work to undermine climate action and shut down one of the most effective ways to avert the climate crisis.
The opportunity lies in the growing awareness of methane as a climate problem and the COP26 pledge by global leaders to take action. This momentum will also be carried by younger generations, concerned about the climate crisis, who are more open to changing their diets to reduce their carbon footprint.