planted city

From The Guardian:

From coal mines to rice paddies and cooking fires to diesel exhausts, 14 highly cost-effective measures could quickly curb global warming and save millions of lives, while also boosting global food production. That is the striking conclusion of a new study published in Science and the most authoritative look yet at the opportunities offered in tackling methane and black carbon - soot - pollution.

The headline findings are striking. The measures would reduce warming by 0.5C by 2050, very useful indeed with the world failing to get to grips with carbon dioxide emissions. And that’s only half the tale. They would also avert between 0.7 and 4.7 million premature deaths caused by air pollution every year and bump up crop yields by 30 to 135m tonnes a year.

Methane and black carbon have grabbed attention before, in a major UNEP report in 2011 for example, because of the speed with which measures to tackle them take effect. Black carbon floats in the atmosphere for about a week, methane for about a decade, while carbon dioxide hangs around, heating the planet, for about a century. That means cuts in methane and black carbon take effect quickly, though CO2 remains the larger problem.

Drew Shindell, at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who led the research is clear that this is not an either/or situation: “It is not at all a substitution. It would be a big mistake to focus on dealing with the near-term problems of methane and black carbon without also focusing on the problem of carbon dioxide as well.”

Nonetheless, his team’s work shows action on methane and black carbon is hugely worthwhile and, for the first time, the study shows reveals the regional benefits, from a more stable monsoon in India to better growing plants in Mexico.

Check out the rest of the article here. You may also want to check out Scientific American’s article, ‘How to Buy Time in the Fight Against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane’.

(Photo credit: AFP)