We need to talk about the way we talk about emissions

Limiting the conversation to carbon is dumb for multiple reasons.

Stephen Markley’s climate epic The Deluge doesn’t open with a wildfire or a flood or a politician giving a speech about a 2050 net-zero pledge. It opens with a closeup of lattice-like structures on the ocean floor: methane hydrates. Crystalline cages of frozen water holding ancient methane gas under intense pressure.

The first character we meet is Tony Pietrus, a scientist running simulations on these deep-sea time bombs. Through him, we get a crash course in prehistoric catastrophe: how undersea methane once erupted from melting hydrates, rapidly heated the planet, and helped pull the trigger on a mass extinction.

It’s a ballsy way to open a novel. There’s chemistry. There’s carbon isotope math. There are words like Paleocene and anoxic. Honestly, I felt like I needed a lab coat, protective goggles, a snack and a beer to get through it. As I was squinting my way through the prologue while holding this immensity of a 900+ page book in my hands, it was impossible not to wonder, wait—is the whole fricking thing going to read like science class???

Thankfully, no. The book finds its flow—your patience does pay off—and honestly, the way all the disparate narrative threads eventually come together to work in concert reminds me of old-school Tom Clancy like The Hunt for Red October. On a thematic level, the reason the story works is because it’s not really about the science. It’s about the dread. About people watching the whole world sleepwalk over the brink and doing all manner of extreme shit to stop it.

And here’s the thing: It’s a work of fiction, but Markley didn’t make up a lick of the science.

We really are seeing methane bubble out of Arctic permafrost. In Svalbard, researchers have found newly exposed “glacial forefields” emitting plumes of methane as the ice retreats. Wetlands, which naturally release methane as organic matter decomposes, are starting to emit even more as they get warmer and wetter—especially in the tropics.

Methane levels in the atmosphere reached an all-time high in 2023, according to NOAA—and the sharpest increases appear to be coming from natural sources now amplified by human-caused warming.

In other words: the dread is justified.

And yet, when we talk about emissions, methane is still treated like a side plot. Carbon dioxide is the headline. Methane is the asterisk.

That’s a problem. Because methane isn’t just a supporting actor in the climate crisis. It’s a major character—and a particularly destructive one.

Methane is the wooooooorst

Let’s start with the basics: methane is what scientists call a short-lived climate pollutant. Sounds cute, right? It stays in the atmosphere for about 12 years, which, compared to carbon dioxide’s centuries-long lifespan, seems almost benign.

But methane makes up for its short stay by being ridiculously effective at trapping heat. Over a 20-year period, it has a global warming potential that’s 84 to 87 times greater than CO₂. Even over 100 years, it’s still 28 to 36 times more potent.

And when it finally breaks down? It doesn’t disappear. It reacts with hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere and turns into—drumroll—carbon dioxide and water vapor. In an unfortunate bit of chemistry, one ton of methane becomes about 2.75 tons of CO₂. So even though it fades before it hits puberty, methane leaves behind a legacy. Which officially makes it the woooooooorst.

The overachiever of atmospheric chaos

Here’s the stat that should be shouted from rooftops: methane is responsible for about 25% of today’s global warming (and that’s before accounting for its impacts after it oxidizes into CO₂ and water vapor). It’s the second-most significant greenhouse gas we emit—and it's rising at a faster rate than CO₂. And yet, it’s still largely missing from the public narrative. Most people know CO₂ is bad. Very few understand how dangerous methane is.

Worse, methane emissions are notoriously undercounted—especially from fossil fuel operations. Many of the largest leaks go undetected until a satellite catches them by accident. Oil and gas operations released around 135 million tons of methane globally in 2022—of which 75% could be reduced with existing (and affordable) technology.

All of which to say: this is one of the most fixable parts of the climate crisis. Methane is low-hanging fruit. We know where it’s coming from. We have the tech to deal with it. And cutting it delivers almost instant climate benefits.

So why aren’t we shouting about it?

The plot twist we keep ignoring

There’s a line from the opening of The Deluge about undersea methane hydrates that stuck with me even as I got deeper into the book.

“Twice the hydrates melted. And twice there were catastrophic extinction events.”

This isn’t just a matter of science. It’s a matter of framing. We can’t keep letting methane slip through the cracks in our policies and regulations. Which means we need to stop letting it slip through the cracks in our messaging.

The climate conversation is overdue for a methane moment. Right now, the story still revolves almost entirely around carbon. CO₂ is the headline. CO₂ is the target. CO₂ is the branding. Which, from a messaging standpoint, makes a certain kind of sense—you want to keep the conversation simple. But by putting all the emphasis on cutting carbon emissions and net zero goals, we end up flattening the full picture.

When the only story we tell is the one about long-term emissions, we miss out on some of the best opportunities we have to make a difference right now.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Refs

• Nature. Ganesan, A. et al. (2022). Tropical wetlands are a key driver of the recent rise in global methane emissions.

• Nature Geoscience. Lamarche-Gagnon, G. et al. (2023). Methane emissions from Arctic glacial forefields

• NOAA (2023). Greenhouse gases continued to rise in 2022

• IPCC AR6 Working Group I Report (2021). The Physical Science Basis

• NASA Climate (2020). The Climate Math of Methane

• UNEP (2021). Global Methane Assessment

• IEA (2022). Methane Tracker 2022

• Global Carbon Project (2023). Global Methane Budget