Mena and Smith | The need for methane targets

As summer in the northern hemisphere draws to a close, hundreds of temperature records have been broken, and there is a roughly 95 per cent chance that 2024 will beat 2023 as the hottest year since measurements began.

But millions of people don’t need data to tell them that – they are living through it.

In 2023, the United States suffered 28 climate-related disasters that each caused at least $1 billion worth of damage while China experienced both extreme heat and devastating floods, with a typhoon displacing more than 120,000 people in Beijing.

It is clear that warming is occurring faster than expected and that the world needs to pull an emergency brake on rising temperatures. China and the US, as global superpowers, could work together to drive change, and they recently held a high-level meeting to discuss opportunities for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. As these conversations continue ahead of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP29, and into 2025, they should focus on dealing with the climate crisis that has already arrived. To address it requires increased efforts to mitigate emissions of super pollutants, which are responsible for more than half of climate change.

Super pollutants, specifically warming agents like methane (N2O), tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons are tens, hundreds, or even thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide per ton. Methane, for example, is a greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year period and contributes to ozone smog. But it remains in the atmosphere for only around a decade, whereas CO2 can last centuries. This means that reducing methane emissions is the fastest and most effective way to fight climate change and improve air quality.

Cleaner air is especially important for communities living or working near cattle farms, oil and gas infrastructure, landfills, and other pollution sources. Deteriorating air quality has become a pressing public-health problem, and reducing methane levels in the atmosphere would lower rates of death and asthma and lessen the severity of wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events.

The good news is that there are ways to cut methane emissions by as much as 45 per cent, which could reduce warming by 0.3° Celsius by 2040, bolster energy and food security, and put the world on a path to a healthier future. In addition to the broad public support for government intervention to address methane emissions, there is also global consensus on the need to address non-CO2 greenhouse gases.

To date, 158 countries have signed the Global Methane Pledge to cut emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. And at last year’s COP28 in Dubai, countries agreed to submit updated 2035 emissions-reduction targets, known as NDCs, or nationally determined contributions, that are economy-wide, cover all greenhouse gases, and are aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

Increased global attention to non-CO2 greenhouse gases could not come at a better time as updated NDCs are due in February 2025. While current NDCs contain meaningful CO2-reduction targets, they often lack concrete, measurable goals for cutting super pollutants. Countries must recognise that this approach does not fully address the fight against climate change and raise their ambitions accordingly. Strong 2035 targets for methane and other super pollutants are necessary to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 and would reduce potentially irreversible planetary changes.

Methane has historically been hard to track, making it difficult to include specific targets in NDCs. But now, after addressing critical funding and technology gaps, methane-detecting satellites are improving data collection. Satellite programmes launched after the previous NDC update, including MethaneSAT, Carbon Mapper, and the WasteMAP, have helped local authorities pinpoint and address emissions sources. Given these developments, there is no excuse for submitting NDCs that lack methane targets.

China and the US can build on the climate commitments they made in last year’s Sunnylands Statement by including robust super-pollutant targets in their updated NDCs. The Chinese government has already expressed its intention to do so while the US has shown a willingness to implement ambitious climate policies, including support for research on emissions-reduction innovations.

The world must unite to reduce super pollutants and usher in a new era of cleaner air, improved food production, and greater energy security. The public overwhelmingly supports measuring and mitigating methane emissions across sectors, and it is time for governments to listen. A good first step would be for the US and China to set quantifiable non-CO2 targets in their revised NDCs and encourage other large methane-emitting countries to do the same.

Marcelo Mena, CEO of Global Methane Hub, is a former Chilean minister of the environment. Sarah Ann Smith is Energy Program Director at Global Methane Hub.© Project Syndicate 2024www.project-syndicate.org