Carbon Alarm

Carbon Alarm

6th May 2006

All current strategies for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions (including selling carbon credits - a market itself starting to fail) aren't working. Although methane emissions (11,.700 times more potent than CO2) are being held "steady", plans to expand coal mining, in countries such as India, Colombia, Bangladesh and Venezuela, may jeopardise even this modest, and dubious, achievement. Coal mines, along with waste landfills and ruminants, are the largest emitters of methane. The World Bank and some companies (notably BHPBilliton) plan to capture methane from coal, and use it as a source of energy, but they are key culprits in promoting mining of the black stuff.