Biden Administration Announces Rule to Cut Millions of Tons of Methane Emissions

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/climate/biden-methane-climate-cop28.html

By Jim Tankersley and Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: Vice President Kamala Harris pledged at a United Nations climate summit on Saturday that the United States would spend billions more to help developing nations fight and adapt to climate change.... Her remarks followed an announcement by U.S. officials at the summit the same day that the federal government would, for the first time, require oil and gas producers to detect and fix leaks of methane. It was the most ambitious move to reduce fossil fuel emissions that President Biden’s administration was expected to unveil at the summit, known as COP28. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that wafts into the atmosphere from pipelines, drill sites and storage facilities, and dangerously speeds the rate of global warming. ...Methane is ...the second-most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Methane only lingers in the atmosphere about a decade after it is released, but it is about 80 times more powerful in the short term at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, which remains in the air for centuries. Scientists say methane is responsible for more than a quarter of the warming that the planet has experienced since the preindustrial era.... 

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