The Second Element, First Priority

Abstract

Leaders have knowingly made a significant miscalculation in basic math, which is pushing world climate policies to the “tipping points . . . that will alter regional and global environmental balances. . . irreversible within the time span of our current civilization.” Climate policy focuses primarily on only one warming chemical, carbon dioxide (CO2), the most prevalent greenhouse gas (GHG). The second most important warming chemical has been miscalculated and underestimated in its causative impact on climate, not by a few percent or by a rounding error, but by several hundred percent.

This article re-examines the science of climate warming in real time. This article identifies and outlines corrections in how U.S. policy has underestimated the real-time impact of methane on the Planet’s environment, and underscores necessary legal policy options to correct the error. The legal policy options for every sector of the U.S. economy are analyzed in this article, to achieve deep decarbonization of methane’s damage to climate and environment.

This article identifies ‘win-win’ policy options and imperatives, if correctly identified and implemented.