Drive for profit is overriding public health, climate change

The Trump administration’s announced roll back of the Environmental Protection Agency’s methane regulations is a blow to public health and our future at a moment when the world can ill afford it. Fires are raging in Brazil, Greenland is melting, heat deaths are rising in Nevada and Arizona, and even climate deniers are falling silent.

Natural gas has been touted as a clean fuel and as a bridge to a renewable future. But methane emissions give the lie to calling natural gas “clean.” Methane is about 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane emissions are responsible for about 25 percent of the climate disruption that we are now experiencing.

According to EPA, rolling back this rule might save the industry nationally less than $20 million annually. With its willingness to protect even a small profit to industry at a larger cost to the climate, the EPA should be renamed the “Environmental Pollution Agency.”

Allison Lemons Santa Fe