 | | Brady Dennis | | | Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today our colleague Brady Dennis, a national climate reporter for The Washington Post, is taking over and writing the top of the newsletter while Maxine Joselow takes a well-deserved break. As a scheduling note, the newsletter won't publish on Monday. We'll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, April 12. | In race to slow warming, the chorus for cutting methane grows louder |  A natural gas processing facility near Williston, N.D., in 2015. (Matthew Brown/AP) | | | Methane is having a moment. Again. The latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this week documented how the world remains on a trajectory toward more disastrous planetary warming — unless humanity makes rapid, far-reaching changes to how we travel, use land and power homes and businesses. The nearly 3,000-page report, while detailing the ways the world is failing in its quest to limit Earth's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, also outlines numerous ways to move closer to that goal. Its authors make clear that of the many priorities for policymakers, few are more urgent than reducing methane emissions — and soon. Methane, which is the main component of natural gas but also comes from sources such as landfills, agricultural operations and natural wetlands, is the world's second-most-abundant greenhouse gas. While methane typically breaks down after a decade or so, it is more than 80 times more potent in its first years in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, which lingers for far longer. According to the IPCC, methane emissions linked to energy supply, particularly "fugitive" emissions that escape from the production and transport of fossil fuels, accounted for as much as 8 percent of the world's greenhouse gas pollution in 2019. | | But the report also found that 50 to 80 percent of such emissions could be avoided with technologies that already exist, and that slashing the methane in the atmosphere over the next two decades could lower peak warming and reduce the likelihood the world will far overshoot its climate targets. "You've got to pay attention to what gives you the most avoided warming in the near term. And methane is the key," Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said in an interview. While eliminating the world's carbon dioxide emissions remains the ultimate long-term goal, Zaelke and a growing chorus of scientists, diplomats and policy experts view tackling methane as the low-hanging fruit of climate action: We already have tools to do it, and it's a strategy that can produce tangible results fairly quickly. A U.N. assessment earlier this year found that a robust effort to cut methane emissions this decade could avert nearly 0.3 degrees Celsius of global warming, helping move the world closer to the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord. People in positions of power seem to be listening. "One of the most important things we can do in this decisive decade — to keep 1.5 degrees in reach — is reduce our methane emissions as quickly as possible," President Biden told world leaders last fall at a U.N. climate summit in Scotland, where more than 100 countries signed on to the newly formed Global Methane Pledge that aims to cut emissions 30 percent by the end of the decade. On that same day, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled long-awaited new rules to curb methane emissions. They would establish standards for old wells, impose more frequent and stringent leak monitoring, and require the capture of natural gas found alongside oil. European regulators also are moving forward with efforts to cut methane pollution, particularly in the energy sector. Nigeria has committed to reducing fugitive methane emissions as part of its official pledge under the Paris agreement. And Colombia this year became the first South American country to regulate methane from oil and gas. In addition, a growing constellation of methane-detecting satellites is giving researchers and regulators new insights into emissions around the globe, from Russian pipelines to North American oil fields — a leap in transparency that promises to help hold corporations and countries more accountable for their promises. Despite signs of progress, serious hurdles remain. | | Some nations that emit large amounts of methane, namely Russia and China, have not yet joined the Global Methane Pledge. And as our colleague Steven Mufson reported Thursday, global methane emissions soared by a record amount in 2021, eclipsing the record set the year before, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The evidence is consistent, alarming and undeniable," NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said. "The trend is not friendly," agreed Sarah Smith, director of the super pollutants program at the Clean Air Task Force. "Methane concentrations have been surging, which adds fuel to the fire and increases the risk we will pass irreversible tipping points." That's why the methane chorus grows louder and louder. "The stakes are high," Smith said. "World leaders made some bold commitments. Now we have to turn that pledge into action." | | |  | On the Hill | | Congress passes bill banning Russian oil imports |  A railway station in Moscow. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News) | | | The House and Senate on Thursday passed bills to cancel normal trade relations with Russia and to ban oil imports from the country — the first stand-alone sanctions measures that Congress has sent to President Biden's desk since the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine in late February, Mike DeBonis reports for The Washington Post. The move largely reinforces an executive order Biden announced last month to ban all oil and gas imports from Russia in coordination with allied countries. Thursday's measures, however, indicate ongoing bipartisan interest in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression. It also allows lawmakers to urge the administration to take additional action and gives Congress the authority to vote to reimpose the ban down the line if need be. Thursday's votes also come as new evidence of potential war crimes emerged this week from Bucha, Ukraine. It increases pressure on the United States and other Western powers to launch an even stronger response. "No nation whose military is committing war crimes deserves free trade status with the United States," Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. "No vile thug like Putin deserves to stand as an equal with the leaders of the free world." All 100 senators voted for both bills Thursday morning despite significant delays. The House first approved the bills last month and — after minor changes from the upper chamber over the course of three weeks — reapproved both pieces of legislation later on Thursday. | Barrasso introduces bill to boost domestic uranium for nuclear reactors |  Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) during a news conference. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg News) | | | Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced a bill on Thursday that directs the Energy Department to ensure that high-assay, low-enriched uranium, which is used in advanced nuclear reactors, is available in the United States as the country moves away from Russian imports of the key mineral. The Fueling our Nuclear Future Act of 2022 would also require the agency to provide an adequate amount of uranium from its federal inventories that could be used by the nation's advanced nuclear reactors while commercial domestic production is catching up. | Manchin calls for more domestic mineral production, repeating supply chain concerns |  Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) in Washington. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) | | | Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on Thursday acknowledged the benefits of electric vehicles in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but repeated concerns that a rapid transition to battery-powered cars would increase the nation's reliance on China for the critical minerals used in batteries. "With numbers like these it is frustrating to hear calls for a swifter transition to electrified transportation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," Manchin said during a committee hearing on Thursday. "We cannot replace one unreliable foreign supply chain with another and think it's going to solve our problems." Instead, he applauded President Biden for invoking the Defense Production Act last week to spur greater domestic output of crucial materials for clean energy technology products and reduce America's reliance on foreign suppliers. More action will be necessary to meet the growing demand for the mining, processing and manufacturing of critical minerals, he said. | | |  | Pressure points | | White House to issue new rule considering climate in permit decisions |  Pipelines at the Bryan Mound Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Freeport, Tex. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News) | | | The White House is expected to issue its final version of a rule that would again require federal agencies to consider climate in permitting decisions for new infrastructure projects, including oil and gas pipelines, mines, roads and renewables. The proposed rule would also reverse Trump-era environmental permitting laws, an administration spokeswoman said on Thursday, Bloomberg's Stephen Lee reports. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs completed its review of the rule on Wednesday and sent it back to the Council on Environmental Quality, which "will be issuing the final rule soon," the spokeswoman said. It is the first of two sets of changes that, when combined, would restore the National Environmental Policy Act to its pre-2020 condition, and in some cases go further, she added. In 2020 the Trump administration changed the rules so that regulators were not required to assess long-term climate effects in their decision-making. | | |  | Extreme events | | Scientists predict seventh-straight above-average hurricane season |  Flooding after Hurricane Harvey. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | Researchers at Colorado State University are calling for the seventh above-average Atlantic hurricane season in a row with 19 named storms on deck, according to their outlook published Thursday, Matthew Cappucci and Kasha Patel report for The Post. Already the scientists, who study large-scale features of the atmosphere and the ocean, are pointing to a season even busier than that of 2021, which produced 21 named storms — the third most on record. Although the researchers are expecting fewer storms in 2022, they say this year's Atlantic hurricane season will be more active in terms of storm intensity and duration. Scientists have previously found that human-caused climate change has fueled some of the rapid intensification of storms in recent decades because of unusually warm water temperatures and low wind shears. At the same time, studies show that climate change has caused hurricanes to move more slowly and drop more rain in a concentrated area. | | |  | Viral | | |
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