Gov. Spanberger approved a bill that could help reduce landfill methane pollution, a step in the right direction, guest columnists Vivian Thomson and Michael Mann write.
Given the absence of national climate leadership in our current political environment, states and localities are more critical than ever in advancing climate action. In Virginia, Maryland and New York, state and local politicians are poised to be climate leaders or laggards when it comes to controlling methane, a potent, short-lived greenhouse gas.
Second only to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning, the reduction of methane emissions is one of the most important controls we have in slowing the rate of climate change.
A new study suggests that we could be far closer — just a couple decades away — to crossing a critical climate tipping point, where we induce an irreversible collapse of the great ocean conveyor. On these timescales, methane is more than 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide in warming the planet.
Methane accounts for an estimated 30% of human-caused warming over the past century. It also contributes to the formation of ambient ozone, which harms public health and causes crop losses. The leading sources of methane in the United States are oil and natural gas systems, agriculture, and landfills.
Despite methane’s potency as a greenhouse gas, the chemical compound is removed from the atmosphere much faster than carbon dioxide. If we stop releasing methane, what’s left of it in the atmosphere will be removed relatively quickly, thereby helping to mitigate climate change over the next few decades. Reducing methane emissions will also help buy us time as we decrease our dependence on fossil fuels and thwart the longer-lived carbon dioxide they produce.
In Virginia, Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill to help reduce the state’s landfill methane emissions. That measure, House Bill 1011, lets localities require diversion of organic waste from disposal by large waste generators.
Virginia has long been known for its high levels of imported landfilled trash and for the disproportionate location of many landfills in marginalized communities.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, the county executive is urging the county’s legislative leaders to export the locality’s huge amount of trash (600,000 tons/year) to an out-of-state landfill, with Virginia’s landfills clearly in the county executive’s sights. Right now, Montgomery County’s trash is burned in a resource recovery facility, and the resulting ash is landfilled.
In New York State, Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to discount the global warming potential of methane. Her proposal, if it comes to fruition, would undercount that pollutant’s short-term impacts and would weaken New York’s efforts to mitigate climate change. A March 7 letter signed by 67 climate scientists protested Hochul’s plan.
In landfills, the anaerobic decomposition of organic waste creates methane, which is not produced when trash is treated in a resource recovery facility. In part because of methane’s potency, but also because landfill gas collection systems can be inefficient, life cycle waste management models often find that for each ton of trash treated, landfills create more greenhouse gas pollution than resource recovery facilities, which emit carbon dioxide. And recent research shows that U.S. landfills are leaking much more methane than previously thought.
Because the administration of President Donald Trump is taking a slash-and-burn approach to climate change regulations, state and local governments must push back. Ours is a federal system, in which much political authority is decentralized. A prime manifestation of that decentralization is state and local laws that aim to protect human health and the environment.
In fact, it’s quite usual in America for state or local entities to adopt environmental regulations ahead of the national government.
In the greenhouse gas arena, many states have moved aggressively to promote climate action or renewable energy. California’s leadership on this is well known. But even Republic-dominated states like Texas and Iowa have embraced renewable energy.
Going forward, Montgomery County’s leaders must ensure that they minimize waste-related climate impacts. New York’s state lawmakers should not weaken the state’s method for measuring the climate impacts of methane pollution. Keeping New York’s current method is consistent with that used by law in Maryland.
Virginia took a step in the right direction with Spanberger’s signature of the waste diversion bill. More robust legislative action should follow.
With the nation’s 250th birthday just around the corner, we should not forget that the founders imagined that the states and national government would restrain and complement one another. In describing our famous system of checks and balances, James Madison famously remarked in Federalist 51 that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
As one of us (Mann) wrote in 2023 in, we can avoid catastrophic climate impacts, but only if we take meaningful actions to address the climate crisis. Because the Trump administration is failing us in this regard, our state and local politicians must choose to be leaders, not laggards. And a critical weapon in their climate action toolkits is reducing methane pollution.
Editor’s note: This column was updated to reflect Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s signature of HB 1011.
