A group of leading global companies has today announced a $100 million initiative to accelerate the reduction of superpollutants - powerful
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A group of leading global companies has today announced a $100 million initiative to accelerate the reduction of superpollutants - powerful warming agents such as methane, black carbon, and refrigerant gases that are responsible for roughly half of all climate warming to date and can contribute to harmful air pollution.
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Rapid action on superpollutants can also deliver significant human and environmental benefits. According to analysis, aggressive reductions could avoid more than half a degree Celsius of warming by 2050, prevent millions of premature deaths from air pollution each year, and protect tens of millions of crops annually. Cutting superpollutants is therefore one of the most effective and immediately available ways to slow near-term warming, making it a critical emergency brake for the planet.
The world has warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels, much of it occurring since 1950, and the pace continues. That’s why it was so important that more than 100 countries joined a coalition led by the United States and the European Union last week to cut global emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane by at least 30 percent by 2030.
But delegates meeting at a world climate conference in Glasgow have more to do: For the security of the planet, they need to act further and faster to limit near-term temperature increases.
The other element of that strategy is reducing emissions of the most pernicious of climate pollutants — those that, along with methane, supercharge warming over the short term. Short of geoengineering the climate, this is the fastest way to slow global warming.
These superpollutants, as we call them, have the potential to upend critical natural systems, accelerating the melting of reflective Arctic sea ice and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland and the thawing of permafrost in the world’s boreal regions. That thawing will be disastrous for the climate if it ends up unleashing the vast quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases within the frozen soil.
We know from measurements of air trapped in Antarctic ice that the amount of methane in the air has reached its highest level in at least 800,000 years. And since emissions of methane can be more than 80 times as potent in warming the planet over 20 years as carbon dioxide, methane cuts have a special role in limiting near-term temperature increases. Two other short-lived climate pollutants are also particularly potent: hydrofluorocarbons, primarily used in refrigeration and air-conditioning, and black carbon soot, caused by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood and organic waste, like yard and farm scraps.
Reductions in these pollutants are possible with existing technology and could further limit temperature increases over the next couple of decades, avoiding three times as much warming by 2050 as strategies targeting carbon dioxide alone.
In 2016, 197 countries agreed to reduce hydrofluorocarbon use by more than 80 percent over the next 30 years, with the potential to avoid nearly half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century. Those countries need to speed up that schedule and provide additional financial support to help some low-income countries comply.
In California, clean air rules have reduced black soot carbon emissions by 90 percent since the 1960s. This can be replicated elsewhere. In particular, the world needs to focus on black carbon emissions from oil and gas production in the Arctic. These particles darken the snow and ice, reducing the reflection of solar radiation in a region that is warming at three times the global rate, with the potential to influence global weather patterns. Reducing these emissions should be a global priority.
