We definitely need to decarbonize energy, agriculture, and other sectors. But combining decarbonization with aggressive methane cuts will mitigate global warming much faster in the coming decades than decarbonization alone.  Here’s why:

Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas, but reducing warming by cutting CO2 is a painfully slow proposition, like turning around an aircraft carrier. Since it persists in the atmosphere for centuries, and CO2 already emitted will continue to warm the planet for centuries. Even supposing we could zero CO2 emissions out now, and/or remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere, it would still take many decades before we’d feel any  significant slowing sof global temperature rise. 

Fortunately, methane, the second most important greenhouse gas, is much different.   It has a half-life of just 10-12 years, so it oxidizes washes out of the atmosphere relatively quickly, transforming into water vapor and CO2, a much less potent greenhouse gas. As a result, leading scientists point out, if we eliminated all anthropogenic and some excess biogenic methane emissions, atmospheric methane levels could return to pre-industrial levels in just 10 to 20 years, reducing global heating by 0.5°C.  

According to a study commissioned by LINGO, if we eliminated manmade CO2 emissions starting now, it would take until the end of this century to be felt, with a projected 0.1°C reduction in global heating by 2100.  But if we eliminated anthropogenic methane emissions alone, we’d feel that 0.1°C reduction within a decade, and a 0.4°C reduction by 2050.