Biden is working with the EU to cut climate-wrecking methane emissions

US President Joe Biden, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, holds a virtual meeting with the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate.
US President Joe Biden, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, holds a virtual meeting with the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate. Copyright AFP
By AP with APTN
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Methane is one of the most potent agents of climate damage, gushing up from countless uncapped oil and gas rigs.

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President Joe Biden has been negotiating what the world's next steps will be against rapidly worsening climate change. On Friday he met with a small group of other global leaders and announced a new US-European pledge to cut climate-wrecking methane leaks.

Grim findings from scientists this year show that the world is nearing the point where the level of climate damage from burning oil, gas and coal becomes catastrophic and irreversible. This represents a 'code red for humanity'.

“We have to act and we have to act now,” Biden said, speaking on a specially erected White House set that showed virtual arrays of solar panels in the background and a wall of other global leaders listening on screens.

Biden, in the public opening of the otherwise private talks, hailed a new US agreement with the European Union which aimed at cutting the two entities’ methane emissions to 30 per cent by the end of this decade. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is one of the most potent agents of climate damage, gushing up from countless uncapped oil and gas rigs, leaky natural gas pipelines and other oil and gas facilities.

Methane is one of the most potent agents of climate damage, gushing up from countless uncapped oil and gas rigs.

Biden evoked the “damage and destruction” he had seen in the United States at the meeting, as well as the severe flooding in Europe and other global damage from the warming climate. He cited his trips earlier this month to California, where firefighters are battling larger, fiercer and deadlier wildfires almost year-round as temperatures rise and drought worsens, and to the northeastern US and Gulf Coast, where Hurricane Ida and its flooding killed scores, as natural disasters increase in number and severity under climate change.

As Biden spoke on Friday, California firefighters were trying to stop fires from reaching ancient groves of sequoias that are thousands of years old and the height of high-rise buildings.

The White House billed Friday's meeting as a chance for some of the world leaders to strategise how to achieve big, fast cuts in climate-wrecking petroleum and coal emissions. The administration is also trying to re-establish the United States' Major Economies Forum - a climate group set up by former President Barack Obama and revived by Biden - as a significant forum for international climate negotiations.

Friday's meeting followed a much bigger and flashier virtual White House climate summit in April. This saw scores of heads of governments, representing allies and rivals, and big economies and small, making sweeping speeches about the need to act against climate change.

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Methane is one of the most potent agents of climate damage.Canva

But Friday’s attendees included only a dozen leaders: those from Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, the European Commission, the European Council, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United Nations.

China, India and Russia, with the United States, are the nations that emit the most climate-damaging gases.

China, India and Russia, with the United States, are the nations that emit the most climate-damaging gases from the production and burning of oil, natural gas and coal.

There was no word on their leaders' taking part.

However, the White House said in a statement that Biden had directed his climate envoy, John Kerry, to lead a minister-level climate session afterwards with China, Germany, India and Russia. It gave no other immediate details.

Stricter rules on methane emissions must be put in place

Climate advocates have stressed the importance of the US coordinating with Europe and Asia for a joint front in coaxing China. The country emits more climate-damaging fumes than the rest of the developed world combined.

Fred Krupp, president of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said cutting methane pollution is the single fastest, most effective strategy to slow the rate of warming. A 30 per cent reduction in methane pollution should be only “the entry point for this critical conversation," he said.

"Many countries can and should aim even higher."

While methane is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, it stays in the air only about a decade, which means cutting methane emissions achieves quicker climate action.

The US-EU pledge comes as the US Environmental Protection Agency is set to propose stricter rules against methane emissions for the oil and gas sector, as laid out in one of Biden’s first executive orders.

The new rules, expected in the next two weeks, are likely to be stricter than an Obama-era standard set in 2016. The Obama standard was reinstated in June after Congress took the unusual step of invalidating a Trump-era EPA rollback of methane protections.

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STR/AFP or licensors
A thermal power plant is seen in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on July 16, 2021.STR/AFP or licensors

The pending EPA rule is expected to restrict methane emissions from new and existing wells, including hundreds of thousands of older wells that are not subject to federal regulation under current law.

Biden has sought to make the US a leader again in global climate efforts after President Donald Trump removed the US from the Paris climate accord. Biden promised at the April summit to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50 per cent to 52 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Following through on that pledge depends in large part on the passage of a $3.5 trillion budget (€2.9 trillion) that includes tax incentives and other policies to substantially cut fossil fuel pollution by the power sector. The Democratic-only legislation faces an uphill battle in Congress.

Biden is also striving to get significant investment in climate-friendly measures such as charging stations for electric vehicles out of Congress, in the face of objections from Republicans and some Democrats.

Friday’s session will be followed by another closed-door session of 35 to 40 world leaders, to be hosted Monday morning by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

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The private sessions are seeking to ensure global leaders come to COP26 in November, a UN climate session with commitments of significant new actions to slow climate change. Biden and others bill the climate summit in Glasgow as a last chance for the world to commit to cutting use of fossil fuels fast enough to stave off the worse scenarios of global warming.

“We have to bring to Glasgow our highest possible ambitions,” Biden said. "Those that have not yet done so, time is running out.”

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