Methane, black carbon and tropospheric ozone are responsible for 50% of worldwide temperature rise. Reducing these emissions can fast track controlling planetary heating and rapidly clean up our air supply.
Heads of state are gathered in Belém, Brazil for United Nations Climate Summit. This year’s meeting is a defining test: can we seize the fastest route to slow global warming while protecting people’s health? Key to this will be building a global momentum on ‘super pollutants’ — the fast-acting gases and particles responsible for half of current warming.
Super pollutants like methane, black carbon and tropospheric ozone trap far more heat per tonne than carbon dioxide, yet remain in the atmosphere for a much shorter time. In some cases only days. They have not had as much attention as carbon dioxide (CO2) which, once emitted, remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But the fact super pollutants are so short-lived means cutting them can reduce climate change within years, and deliver cleaner air almost overnight.
Acting on them is the world’s emergency brake on climate change: we can pull it whilst continuing and increasing efforts to reduce carbon dioxide, and we slow warming in the short run and in the long run. Super pollutants are already responsible for almost half of the global warming we have experienced to date. Cutting them could reduce global warming up to four times faster than CO₂ cuts alone.
What’s more, as some of these pollutants are also bad for our health and for crop growth, we save lives, ease pressure on health systems and protect harvests. More widely, integrated action on air and climate could unlock more than US $2 trillion in economic benefits through higher productivity and lower healthcare costs. These are not distant gains. Children breathing cleaner air will grow up healthier; farmers will see higher yields; and governments will save billions in public expenditure.
Yet despite clear evidence and proven solutions, super pollutants still attract only a fraction of the policy focus and finance devoted to long-term decarbonisation. Fewer than one in five national climate plans currently includes clear targets for super pollutants. That gap matters: policy drives investment, and the absence of explicit goals keeps these quick wins off the table.
Integrating black carbon — the sooty particles from diesel, open burning and dirty fuels — into climate plans would bring rapid returns for climate and health. Governments can deliver on this through solutions that go above and beyond current decarbonisation plans, such as rapidly phasing out diesel vehicles and machines, replacing polluting stoves with clean cooking, better management of wildfires, and enforcing clean polar fuels for ships in the Arctic.
A second super pollutant that has received very little attention is tropospheric ozone, the toxic gas that forms when methane and other pollutants react in sunlight. Targeting its precursors is essential to protecting both our lungs and our crops. For example cutting methane from waste, agriculture and fossil-fuel operations.
Methane itself is a super pollutant that is responsible 0.3°C of global warming to date and is generating high-level political interest on these solutions. All processes emit several pollutants, so addressing many super pollutants together can yield results that no single policy targeted at specific pollutants can deliver in isolation.
COP30 gives global leaders both the platform and the responsibility to act. This COP they can commit to national targets for all super pollutants within their enhanced national climate plans, align climate, air-quality and health policy agendas, and scale up financing for proven, fast-acting measures that deliver co-benefits across development goals.
Super pollutants are not a distraction from deep decarbonisation, they are its most powerful ally. Acting on them now will buy us precious time and show citizens that climate action brings benefits they can feel right here and now.
Image: Hans Westbeek / Unsplash
Jane Burston is CEO of Clean Air Fund.
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