By Seth Millstein for Sentient Climate.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for Connecticut News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

We talk a lot about carbon emissions in the context of climate change, but some of the most dangerous emissions aren't carbon at all. They're methane - a colorless, odorless glass that's primarily produced biologically and warms the planet much faster than carbon dioxide. The Biden administration took some good first steps to reduce America's methane emissions - but will President-elect Donald Trump build upon these steps when he assumes office, or claw back the progress that's been made?

Understanding Methane Emissions

Methane is one of the three main greenhouse gasses, along with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. The Earth and its various ecosystems produce methane naturally; freshwater lakes, wetlands and permafrost are the primary natural sources of methane. It's also the main component of natural gas.

However, a 2021 United Nations report found that currently, roughly 60 percent of methane emissions are anthropogenic, or the result of human activity. Agriculture produces more methane than any other sector around the world, and around 90 percent of anthropogenic methane emissions come from one of three sources: agriculture, fossil fuels and waste.

The line between anthropogenic and naturogenic (naturally-occurring) methane emissions can be blurry. For instance, a major source of methane is cow burps (and, to a lesser extent, farts). While cows are obviously "naturally-occurring," animal agriculture is not, and neither is the amount of cows we've brought into existence. The sheer amount of methane produced by cows is the result of our domestication of them, not any sort of natural process.

Similarly, methane is the main ingredient in natural gas, and natural gas existed long before humans came around. But it's the extraction of natural gas that actually causes this methane to enter the atmosphere, and natural gas extraction is a human activity.

Semantics aside, one thing is certain: There's a lot more methane in the atmosphere than there would have been had humans never existed. And that's not good.

Why Is Methane a Problem?

Like other greenhouse gasses, methane contributes to climate change by warming the atmosphere and the planet. But it works a bit differently than carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.

Carbon dioxide makes up almost 80 percent of all greenhouse emissions, whereas methane constitutes just over 11 percent. In addition, methane dissipates rather quickly; it only sticks around in the atmosphere for around a decade, whereas carbon dioxide can linger for up to 1,000 years.

This might have you thinking that methane isn't that big of a deal, at least insofar as greenhouse gasses go. The problem is that methane traps much, much more heat than carbon dioxide - so much so that, over a 100 year period, methane has 27-30 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Over the course of 20 years, it has 80 times the warming potential.

In addition to warming the environment, methane also makes the air dangerous to breathe, because when sunlight interacts with methane, it forms a pollutant called tropospheric ozone. Although tropospheric ozone only stays in the air for a few weeks at most, it can be fatal; it's estimated that up to a million people die every year from respiratory diseases caused by ozone pollution, and methane is a major contributor to this.

How Do Farms Contribute to Methane Emissions?

Around one-third of all anthropogenic methane emissions come from livestock. There are two main reasons for this.

First, there are the burps. A number of animals produce methane as a natural byproduct of their digestive systems; these animals are known as ruminants, and they include not only cows but also sheep, goats, yaks and more. When ruminants burp, they release methane into the air. These are called enteric methane emissions.

The other main source of livestock-related methane emissions is the animals' manure - or, to be more precise, the manner in which farmers store the animals' manure.

Manure management is a significant component of livestock farming. One of the more common ways of storing manure is to put it in large lagoons or pits; this prevents it from leaking into nearby soil and waterways, and also allows farms to more accurately monitor and track their farms' manure output.

Over time, however, the top layer of manure in the lagoon hardens, which prevents oxygen from reaching the manure below. And this is a problem, because when manure is placed in an oxygen-free environment, the microorganisms that produce methane thrive and proliferate, thus increasing its methane emissions. That's exactly what happens in manure pits.

These two factors - enteric emissions and manure (mis)management - account for 80 percent of agriculture-related methane emissions. The other 20 percent comes from rice farming. Rice is a semi-aquatic plant that requires a layer of standing water to grow; this water prevents oxygen from reaching the microbes in the soil, allowing them to reproduce and create methane in a manner similar to manure in a lagoon.

The problem of livestock-related methane emissions is exacerbated by the fact that global meat production has been on the rise for the last 60 years, on both an absolute and per-capita level. This makes reducing these missions all the more important - but how?

How Can Farmers Reduce Their Methane Emissions?

A number of solutions have been proposed, and in some cases implemented, for reducing methane emissions.

Many of these involve new or emerging technologies. There are feed additives that reduce the amount of enteric methane production in ruminants' stomachs, for instance, and manure aeration systems that allow oxygen to flow into stored manure on farms. One company is even developing a methane-trapping mask for cattle to wear while grazing.

Other methane reduction strategies are decidedly more low-tech, such as selectively breeding animals to produce less methane. Simply making livestock farms more efficient on the whole can also have an impact, as this results in increased output with no corresponding increase in methane emissions.

All of these solutions, however, face obstacles. Fernanda Ferreira, Director for Agriculture Methane at Clean Air Task Force, tells Sentient that one of the biggest challenges in methane mitigation is the simple fact that production facilities and logistical operations vary wildly from farm to farm.

"Let's look at the U.S.," Ferreira says. "When you think about goats, sheep, beef and dairy farmers, you have a little over a million farmers. So we're talking about one million different ways of managing these animals. Even if you zoom in into one specific region - let's say the West, or a state like California - there will be variation."

This variation, Ferreira says, complicates efforts to implement methane mitigation technologies on a wide scale, because every farm is a unique operation with slightly different needs, capabilities and restrictions.

"When you zoom in, you have a lot of variation of how farmers handle these animals," Ferreira says. "And this is directly linked to the challenge of adopting [methane reduction] technologies."

Another major challenge is cost. Many of these solutions are expensive, and the cost of implementing them falls on the farmers themselves. But while methane reduction benefits all of humanity in the long run, it doesn't offer farmers any benefit in the short run. As such, farmers largely aren't incentivized to adopt these technologies.

Lastly, there's the simple fact that a lot of this technology is still in the research and development phase. As of this writing, only one synthetic methane-reducing feed additive has been approved by the FDA, and that approval only came six months ago. Other proposed additives are prohibitively expensive, not very effective or come with other drawbacks. The methane-trapping cow mask also has several logistical issues, and has been criticized as a potential form of greenwashing.

What Has President Biden Done About Methane?

In 2021, the Biden administration unveiled the U.S. Methane Emissions Action Plan, a 20-page document with various initiatives and proposals for reducing U.S. methane emissions. They include incentives for farmers to reduce their methane emissions, new regulations aimed at doing the same, and the formation of an interagency task force to collect methane and use it for "on-farm renewable activities."

"The U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan provides the framework for the work on agriculture methane emissions," Ferreira says. "The most important outcome that it supports is the deployment of climate smart-initiatives, such as the use of methane-reducing feed additives and the implementation, more broadly, of manure management practices."

In 2023, the Biden administration announced The National Strategy to Advance an Integrated U.S. Greenhouse Gas Measurement, Monitoring, and Information System (yes, that's the official name). This set of policies is geared at improving the tracking, monitoring and reporting of greenhouse emissions, both inside and outside of the government.

These two action plans, Ferreira says, are important first steps in tackling the methane problem-head on. In addition to all of this, the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, contained funding for a selection of "climate-smart" agricultural practices, including some aimed at reducing methane emissions from farms.

The Inflation Reduction Act also expanded the EPA's authority to regulate methane emissions, and created the Methane Emissions Reduction Program for the purpose of doing so. The Biden administration allocated $1 billion to this program in 2023, and in December, introduced new limits on methane emissions via the EPA.

However, these initiatives only apply to the oil and gas industries, so they won't have any effect on agricultural methane emissions.

What Will Trump Do About Methane?

Methane emissions weren't a central focus of the 2024 campaign, or even a tertiary one, and President-elect Trump made no policy pledges regarding methane. However, actions that he took as president during his first term strongly suggest that he'll seek to undo the Biden administration's progress on methane reduction.

During his time in office, Trump withdrew or weakened a number of federal regulations aimed at tracking and reducing methane emissions, including Obama-era rules that required oil and gas companies to monitor and fix methane leaks at their facilities and take steps to reduce methane emissions on public and tribal lands.

After Trump's 2024 victory, the Biden administration finalized a rule that fines oil and gas companies for their methane emissions, and there's been widespread speculation that Trump will scrap this rule once he assumes office.

Trump, who once said that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by China to make U.S. manufacturing less competitive, withdrew or weakened over 100 environmental regulations during his first term. Nothing he's said or done indicates that he's changed his tune on climate matters since then, so it seems likely that he'll continue rolling back environmental protections, including those aimed at reducing methane emissions.

While this would be unfortunate, Trump is just one person, and America is just one country. There are plenty of other leaders around the world, both in the private and public sectors, making efforts to curb methane emissions.

Canada, Mexico, Japan and several other countries have made significant investments in methane reduction as part of the Global Methane Pledge, for instance. In addition, almost 100 mayors around the world have pledged to reduce their cities' emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, which Trump withdrew the U.S. from. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has invested millions in a feed additive company aimed at reducing enteric methane production in livestock.

There are, in other words, plenty of opportunities for global action on methane that don't involve the U.S. president.

The Bottom Line

Reducing methane emissions is no easy task; there are technological, financial, logistical and even dietary hurdles. But given methane's rapid-fire warming potential, overcoming these obstacles isn't optional, but necessary.

Our planet won't remain liveable for future generations without a sharp reduction in methane emission. The Biden administration took some good first steps in bringing about such a reduction, and hopefully, more steps from other world leaders will follow, even if the Trump administration rolls back progress on the issue.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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Indiana now classifies natural gas and propane as clean energy under a new state law.

Gov. Mike Braun signed Senate Bill 178, granting the fuels eligibility for tax credits and other incentives.

Sam Carpenter, executive director of the nonprofit Hoosier Environmental Council, opposed the measure, arguing the fuels significantly contribute to climate pollution.

"Methane is around 38 times more potent as a greenhouse gas," Carpenter pointed out. "What happens is there's a lot of leakage that happens in the drilling, in the extraction, the storage, the transportation, even the burning of methane."

Proponents of the bill argued it supports an "all of the above" approach to reduce energy costs for Hoosiers.

Carpenter cautioned investing in natural gas infrastructure could backfire. He noted the high costs and slow pace of building pipelines and transmission systems. He also emphasized Indiana's energy landscape is already shifting.

"Ninety percent of new generation coming online is renewable," Carpenter stressed. "It's wind, and it's solar, and it's battery storage, and that's really based on price, and it's based on the competitive factor, and it's based on timeliness."

Carpenter suggested the measure will likely have minimal immediate impact unless federal policies change. The bill passed with bipartisan support in the General Assembly.


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Lawmakers in the U.S. House will vote on a bill this week affecting Virginia's ability to create stronger emissions standards for vehicles and trucks.

The bill targets "California emissions standards," policies which call for 100% of cars sold to be electric or emissions-free by 2035. That policy has been partially or fully adopted by Virginia and 16 other states.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to repeal the standards, leading to the legislative effort.

Rob Sargent, program director of Coltura, an energy transition nonprofit, said the federal government should be increasing access to electric vehicles instead of going against policies that promote them.

"EV tax credits and any programs designed to make EVs available to the American people are key," he said, "and can unlock decades of savings for people for what has been a strain on their household finances."

A report by the independent Government Accountability Office stated that Congress does not have the authority to repeal the emissions standards. Supporters of the bill have said banning gas cars is an affront to consumer freedom.

More than a half million Virginians are considered "gas super users," meaning they use significantly more gasoline than the average driver.

Sargent said repealing strong emissions standards would make it harder for states to reduce their carbon footprint.

"If Congress acts to pull the rug out from under those states' ability to take action to make cars cleaner in their state," he said, "then it also will undercut the availability of electric vehicles for consumers that would save them money."

The Senate is considering a similar bill despite opposition from within the Legislature.


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This week, the Trump administration announced what it terms "emergency permitting" for energy projects, streamlining a sometimes yearslong process down to 28 days. Opponents said it will mean time in court.

The U.S. Interior Department plans to alter the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and National Historic Preservation Act so projects around oil, gas, coal, minerals and more can proceed without the agency approvals the laws require. The department said it's part of President Donald Trump's January "National Energy Emergency" declaration.

Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, said there is no such emergency.

"The idea that there's some kind of 'national energy emergency' is a lie that the Trump administration is making up to justify an extralegal approach to approving energy projects and skipping past the environmental safeguards that Congress put in place," Molvar contended.

He argued the move risks historic sites, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities on Montana's 30 million acres of public land. Molvar added he expects energy projects brought under the new, streamlined permitting will be overturned in court.

The announcement comes just one day after the Interior Department's draft strategic plan for the next four years was leaked. A "big idea" cited in the draft is to, quote, "release federal holdings to allow state and local communities to reduce costs," and in parentheses, "housing." Molvar stressed it would essentially put federal responsibilities in the hands of smaller entities.

"These state and local governments have a distinct tendency -- particularly in conservative parts of the rural West -- to want to maximize industrial development, maximize local communities' abilities to line their own pockets, with really little consideration to the long-term health of the land," Molvar emphasized.

Strategic goals listed in the plan include to "restore American prosperity" and "ensure national security through infrastructure and innovation."


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