interview – Jessica S. McKenzie

Bulletin: ‘Mass delusion and wishful thinking’: Why everything you think you know about methane is probably wrong

Have you heard about the miracle quick-fix for our climate ills?

The greenhouse gas methane is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the increase in global temperature since the industrial revolution and is often described as 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Sometimes news outlets remember to qualify that with “over 20 years,” and sometimes they don’t.

In a press call during the 28th Conference of Parties, the annual United Nations climate conference, US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said methane was his “number one” priority at the conference. Shortly after, the Biden administration announced a new EPA rule targeting methane emissions. The press release announcing the rule stated, “Sharp cuts in methane emissions are among the most critical actions the United States can take in the short term to slow the rate of climate change.”

“[T]he U.S. is turbocharging the speed and scale of climate action, at home and abroad, including our collective efforts to tackle super-pollutants like methane,” said US National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi.

The popular narrative suggests that tackling methane emissions is the “low-hanging fruit” in the climate-solutions toolbox. The belief that turning off the taps on this “super-pollutant” could “buy us time” to address the climate crisis is widespread, shared by politicians, journalists, and even some scientists.

But this is a dangerous fallacy, according to Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board.

In an in-depth interview with Bulletin climate editor Jessica McKenzie, Pierrehumbert dissects the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter—the voluntary pledge made at COP28 by some oil and gas companies to slash operational emissions of greenhouse gases, including bringing methane emissions to “near-zero.” He goes on to explain why describing methane as “80 times as potent as carbon dioxide” is inaccurate and misleading and why the widespread hope that sharp cuts to methane emissions will bring about immediate and significant reductions of global temperatures is both wrong and distressing.

Bulletin: From Montana fires to floods in Vermont: Interview with a climate migrant

This week Vermont (as well as parts of New York and Massachusetts) saw heavy rainfall resulting in catastrophic flooding in the state capital and other low-lying towns across the state. One man drowned in his home; hundreds of others were rescued or evacuated. The full extent of the damage to infrastructure and personal property will not be known for some time, and more rain is forecast for this weekend.

State climate assessments have already found that, because of climate change, Vermont is getting wetter: Precipitation is up 21 percent since the beginning of the 20th century, and the state sees almost two and a half more days of heavy precipitation annually than in the 1960s. Consequently, the state is at an increased risk for damaging rainfall and flooding. And yet Vermont has for several years now been positioning itself as a refuge for people looking to escape the worst ravages of the climate crisis.

“Climate change could be, in some ways, beneficial to Vermont,” Republican Gov. Phil Scott said in 2017. “When we’re seeing some of the activity in California today with wildfires and the lack of water in some regions of the country, if we protect our resources, we could use this as an economic boom in some respects.”

While events this week have underscored the reality that there is no escaping the climate crisis, it is true that people have moved to Vermont because the state is perceived to be safer than other places. Zack Porter, the co-founder of a regional environmental nonprofit called Standing Trees, chose to move with his family from Montana to Montpelier, Vermont, in 2018 to get away from the long wildfire seasons out West. The Bulletin reached out to Porter to ask him about experience as a voluntary climate migrant, and about his hopes and dreams for how Vermont will recover and rebuild from this disaster.

Bulletin: Author and activist Bill McKibben on the “timed test” of the climate crisis

When it comes to the climate crisis, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben hasn’t been a fully “objective journalist” since he finished penning his first book, The End of Nature, over three decades ago, and realized he didn’t want the world to burn up. While McKibben continues to write on the subjects of climate and the environment for publications like The New Yorker, The Nation, and the Bulletin, in recent years his attentions and energies have been at least equally spent on climate activism. The organization that McKibben and others founded in 2008, 350.org, is now a vast operation that has affiliations with some 300 other climate organizations around the world.

Earlier this year, McKibben founded a new group for Americans over the age of 60 called Third Act and started a Substack newsletter called The Crucial Years. In an interview with Bulletin associate editor Jessica McKenzie, McKibben discusses these new endeavors, when he realized the fight over climate was more about money and power than science and evidence, the technological shifts that make climate action easier now than 10 years ago, and which environmental crisis McKibben believes is underappreciated by the general public.