By Mark Brownstein
SOURCE:Environmental Defense Fund
DESCRIPTION:
Everyone knows that if you want your kids to grow up strong and healthy, they need to eat their vegetables. But as any parent knows, it’s easier said than done. That’s why in my house, there is a rule: you can’t have any dessert until you eat your vegetables.
Now, of course, my kids like to argue with me and my wife about exactly how many vegetables they have to eat and whether they can reach into the fridge and select a different vegetable if they don’t like the one she or I cooked that night. That’s okay. We like to encourage creative problem solving. But there’s no getting around the rule. You must eat your vegetables.
As I see it, methane pollution from the oil and gas industry is a lot like kids and vegetables. Reducing it is good for them, but we have to have a rule that requires them to do it.
According to a new report EDF commissioned, the U.S. oil and gas industry could achieve a 40 percent reduction in methane pollution within the next five years for less than one penny per million cubic feet of gas produced. The total amount of capital required to achieve this significant reduction would be less than 1% of the capital expenditures the industry made this year alone!
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KEYWORDS: Climate and the environment, Markets, Regulation & Policy, Air Quality, climate, colorado, methane, natural gas, EPA, oilandgas