Policies to curb short-lived climate pollutants could yield major health benefits

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-05/du-ptc050317.php

Public Release: 4-May-2017
Policies to curb short-lived climate pollutants could yield major health benefits
Controlling soot, methane, hydrofluorocarbons would yield immediate effects
Duke University

A commitment to reducing global emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) such as methane and black carbon could slow global warming while boosting public health and agricultural yields, aligning the Paris Climate Agreement with global sustainable development goals, a new analysis by an international research panel shows.

Methane and black carbon - or soot - are the second and third most powerful climate-warming agents after carbon dioxide. They also contribute to air pollution that harms the health of billions of people worldwide and reduces agricultural yields.

"Unlike long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, SLCPs respond very quickly to mitigation. It's highly likely that we could cut methane emissions by 25 percent and black carbon by 75 percent and eliminate high-warming hydrofluorocarbons altogether in the next 25 years using existing technologies, if we made a real commitment to doing this," said Drew T. Shindell, professor of climate science at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.

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"The urgency in dealing with SLCPs now rather than later is that if we wait to address them, we continue to incur all these damages - increased public health burdens and reduced agricultural yields - along the way," Shindell said. "If we want to avoid those costs, and keep millions of people from dying, we need to do this now.

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In the new article, they point out that in addition to saving human lives and boosting global food security, curbing SLCPs will significantly slow the pace of climate change over the next 25 years. This could help reduce biodiversity losses and slow amplifying climate feedbacks such as snow-and-ice albedo that are highly sensitive to black carbon.

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