- Methane (CH4) is a powerful greenhouse gas. In the first 20 years after release, methane is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in trapping heat.
- The three main sources of methane emissions are waste and landfill sites, fossil fuels and natural gas leaks, and agriculture.
- While it is considered second to carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, curbing methane emissions is the fastest way to to slow global warming.
Methane or CH4, is a powerful greenhouse gas. It forms only 0.00017% of the atmosphere, but it is crucial in keeping the earth warm and habitable. Excess methane, however, is one of the most dangerous causes of global warming. In the first 20 years after release, methane is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in trapping heat. In fact, it has been responsible for 40% of global warming, since the Industrial Revolution.
What are the main sources of methane emissions?
More than half of the global methane emissions stem from human activities in three sectors: agriculture (40%), fossil fuels (35% of human-caused emissions) and waste and landfills (20%).
In the third place are the landfills. Piles of garbage produce methane when they rot. Then, heatwaves, cigarette butts and other fire sources lead to the infamous landfill fires.
Methane-monitoring satellites that zoom in on sources of the climate-warming gas show that landfills contributed to more than 25 percent of methane emissions in Mumbai and six percent in Delhi. In Pune, isotopic studies, which rely on methane’s atomic makeup, point to significant landfill emissions of methane and a potential natural gas leak.
In the second place are leakages from oil and gas companies and other industrial operations. Burning natural gas produces much less carbon dioxide, than burning oil or coal. Along the way to the burner however, some natural gas escapes gas, which is mainly methane.
And the biggest methane emitter is the agriculture sector. Rice cultivation, enteric fermentation in cattle and crop residue burning are some of the sources of methane emission in agriculture.
When we talk about agricultural methane emissions, it’s primarily from rice cultivation. As you know, in rice cultivation, there is a lot of standing water that’s left after you inundate the crop. That’s the traditional way of growing rice. What happens when you do that is there is something called anaerobic respiration. You let water stay for a long time and the oxygen levels get depleted. And then there is methane and nitrous oxide emissions that emanate as a result of that.
How does methane impact human health?
Increased methane emissions are responsible for half of the observed rise in tropospheric ozone or ground-level ozone, a harmful air pollutant. It creates smog, thereby worsening bronchitis, triggering asthma and permanently damaging lung tissue. Exposure to ground-level ozone has resulted in an estimated one million premature deaths each year.
India is one of the top five emitters of methane. It also has dangerously high levels of tropospheric ozone.
What are the solutions to curb methane emissions?
In November 2021, nearly 100 countries signed the Global Methane Pledge at the climate conference COP26. They made a promise to curb methane emissions by 2030. India, however, did not sign the pledge.
When you talk about agriculture in India, it’s a climate-sensitive sector. Secondly, much of the population that is dependent on agriculture are small and marginal farmers, and almost 51% of Indian agriculture is rain-fed agriculture. We could probably call it survival emissions because people are producing food for subsistence.
She argues that it would not really be fair to burden a farmer who is fighting for subsistence, to commit to methane mitigation targets.
However, India’s scientists and policymakers are trying different ways to reduce methane emissions. From new varieties of rice that require less water, to better quality cattle feed that can reduce methane emissions from cows, and other technological developments for managing landfills and methane leaks in industries, to even coming up with an accurate measurement for methane emissions, there are regular experiments and improvements. But the process has been slow and expensive.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.