A group of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned governments and the livestock industry against adopting “accounting tricks” that could jeopardize the global collective effort needed to control heat-trapping emissions.
In a statement, 42 scientists called on the government of Ireland, a major dairy producer, to reject proposals to allow the use of what is known as the Global Warming Potential Star (GWP*) to measure methane emissions. Scientists say the methodology, originally developed to more accurately measure the warming impact of various greenhouse gases, has been misused by livestock and livestock-rich countries to weaken requirements for reductions in strong, short-lived greenhouse gases, which come primarily from livestock.
Major emitters such as the United States and the European Union, as well as other major livestock producing countries such as Brazil and Argentina, are pushing ahead with the GWP*, which aims to revise climate targets to achieve “temperature neutralization” or “prevent further warming” rather than significantly reducing emissions. These goals will allow the beef and dairy industries, which are responsible for most of the world’s methane, to continue emitting large amounts of methane, scientists say.
“As scientists, our concern is that other countries are now seriously considering these targets. The danger is that one country will adopt them, and the next country will adopt them, and the next country will adopt them,” said Paul Behrens, an environmental scientist at the University of Oxford, who co-authored the letter. “This is a big problem, because the direction we need to go is massive reductions in methane that actually reduce short-term warming. A goal of ‘no more warming’ would do the opposite. It would freeze today’s massive emissions in place and abandon the fastest means of cooling we have.”
If Ireland adopted a ‘temperature neutrality’ target using GWP* in its 2031-2035 carbon budget, the country could emit the equivalent of an additional nine million tonnes of carbon dioxide, roughly the same as burning 20 million barrels of oil, scientists say. New Zealand, another large dairy nation, was the first country to adopt the GWP* approach and adopt a 2025 “no further warming” target, which led to a weakening of its methane reduction targets.
Governments, including those that signed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, use an index called GWP 100 to measure the cumulative impact of emissions over 100 years compared to carbon dioxide. GWP* was developed to measure the warming impact of changes in emission rates between two points in time and to understand the impact of short-lived greenhouse gases such as methane, which only exist in the atmosphere for 10 or 12 years.
But signatories, including prominent climate researchers Michael Mann and Drew Shindel, argue that by using a point-in-time baseline, countries can offset the effects of existing cow and dairy herds.
“This is a really serious misuse because GWP* is designed to look at the effects of future projections on temperature,” said Schindel, a climate scientist at Duke University. “But if you want to look at the responsibility of a particular country or sector, or sector within a country, such as livestock in Ireland, the contribution will be emissions today compared to centuries ago.”
The concentration of methane in the atmosphere is approximately 2.5 times higher than it was before industrialization. Methane is responsible for about one-third of global warming.
“We have a lot more cows than we did back then, and the methane from those cows is now a lot more,” Schindel noted. “This is a pretty significant contributor to climate change, increasing by about half a degree by about 2020.”
The scientists stressed that GWP* gives countries with large existing livestock herds a free pass, while developing countries with historically small herds and low industrial livestock production will be penalized if they increase emissions from a lower baseline.
“It’s a question of fairness,” Schindel said. “It pays to be a big emitter. If you have really high methane emissions right now, you can keep it that way. And that’s usually the United States and a lot of other wealthy countries that have a lot of livestock.”
About this story
As you may have noticed, this article, like all news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We don’t charge subscription fees, keep our news behind paywalls, or fill our website with ads. We provide climate and environmental news free to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with dozens of other news organizations across the country. Many of them cannot afford to do their own environmental journalism. We’ve established bureaus across the country to report on local news, partner with local newsrooms and co-publish stories to ensure this important work is shared as widely as possible.
The two of us started ICN in 2007. Six years later, we won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and now run the nation’s oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom. We tell the story in its entirety. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We explore solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund all aspects of our work. If you haven’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our coverage of the biggest crises facing our planet, and help us reach more readers in more places?
Please make a tax-deductible donation. Any of those things make a difference.
thank you,
Georgina Gustin
washington dc reporter
Georgina Gustin covers agriculture for Inside Climate News and has spent much of her journalism career reporting on the intersection of agriculture, food systems, and the environment. Her work has earned her numerous awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism, and she has been named Glenn Cunningham Agriculture Journalist of the Year twice and once with her ICN colleagues. She has worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Conn., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and CQ Roll Call, and her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Geographic’s The Plate, among others. She is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Colorado Boulder.
