Methane Policy

February 14th, 2005

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

In The New Republic Gregg Easterbrook describes (subscription required) the Bush Administration’s “Methane to Markets” partnership (EPA site). Easterbrook argues that the Bush Administration has not gotten enough credit in the media for this program, which he characterizes as being as significant as successful implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. He suggests,

“The press corps is pretending the anti-methane initiative does not exist in order to avoid inconvenient complications of the Black Hat versus White Hat narrative it has settled into regarding global warming. In this narrative, the White House is completely ignoring building scientific evidence of artificially triggered climate change; everything Bush does is wicked; everything the enlightened Euros do is noble. The narrative is simple and easy to follow–plus, it’s pretty easy to get supporting quotes from Democratic politicians and enviros. The drawback to the narrative is that it isn’t true. But why should that stop the nation’s reporters and editorialists?”

Easterbrook also observes, “That Bush is not doing enough regarding the greenhouse effect is a different and plausible complaint.”


Easterbrook refers to NASA’s ubiquitous James Hansen to support the importance of methane policy. Hansen wrote five years ago, “Non-CO2 greenhouse gases are probably the main cause of observed global warming, with CH4 causing the largest net climate forcing. There are economic incentives to reduce or capture CH4 emissions, but global implementation of appropriate practices requires international cooperation.” (The full peer-reviewed paper can be found here – PDF.)

Four years ago Easterbrook advocated a methane-first approach and explained why he thought it would meet resistance:

“Last year James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA affiliate, began to champion a methane-first approach. But, for ideological and geopolitical reasons, the idea has yet to catch on. Enviros laud Hansen for declaring in 1988 that he was “ninety-nine percent” certain an artificial greenhouse effect had begun. But many grow spitting mad when he suggests that action against methane offers more bang for the buck than action against carbon dioxide. What the hard-core enviros want is punitive fossil-fuel restrictions that screw big oil and big coal; a relatively painless global-warming fix that lets fossil fuel off the hook would leave the movement’s left heartbroken. Moderate enviros worry that a methane-first strategy would cause complacency about carbon dioxide emissions, though Hansen always makes clear that something will eventually need to be done about carbon, too.”

Easterbrook continues this argument in this week’s TNR,

“Yet reporters who write reams about carbon dioxide rarely mention methane, and some environmentalists become actively upset when the potential for methane reduction is raised. Why? Because the United States is the world’s number-one emitter of carbon dioxide. (At least for the moment; if current trends hold, China will pass us.) Keeping the focus on carbon dioxide is the blame-America-first strategy. The European Union, on the other hand, is a leading emitter of methane, given the natural-gas energy economies of many Western European nations. Talk about methane reduction makes Europe uneasy. In the regnant global warming narrative, the United States is always bad and the European Union is always good. Raising the methane issue complicates that narrative.”

However one feels about methane policy, Easterbrook’s essay raises the increasingly important question: How do we break out of the two-sided debate on climate change to open discussion of new and innovative options on policy?

(For a discussion of this two-sided debate and why it persists see this 2000 essay that Dan Sarewitz and I wrote – PDF.)

4 Responses to “Methane Policy”

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  1. chiasm.blog-city.com Says:

    KYOTO BUXX

    India is understandably excited about getting big Kyoto $$$ from European and Japanese companies driven abroad in their desperate desire not to miss their emissions reductions targets by a completely embarassing amount:The coming into force of the

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  5. Crumb Trail Says:

    Scripted Response

    As I’ve said before, if you are not following Prometheus for science policy issues you should be. Easterbrook argues that the Bush Administration has not gotten enough credit in the media for this program, which he characterizes as being…

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