Coal & gas corporations promote methane as natural gas, but unfortunately it's a dangerous, super-potent climate pollutant. Methane forms within coal seams, deep underground over millions of years. When mining corporations dig out coal, methane gas is released and polluted into the air and atmosphere. Gas mining companies drill into coal seams to extract methane, leaking and releasing super-polluting methane in the process. Released methane is not used for electricity or any kind of product: it’s a massively polluting by-product of the already polluting coal & gas industry.
Methane traps over 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, intensifying floods, fires and heatwaves that are devastating communities.
Where carbon dioxide is like a slow cooker for the climate, methane pollution is a blowtorch, pushing us from global warming to global boiling. Methane's potent climate warming effect means even small amounts have an oversized impact on our climate, water and communities. Since the industrial revolution and the rapid expansion of coal & gas mining, methane is estimated to be responsible for a third of all global temperature rise.
Methane also increases asthma, respiratory diseases and cardiovascular diseases and causes more than 1 million premature deaths a year because it increases toxic ground-level ozone and pollution particulates.
Methane is invisible and highly flammable and has caused countless explosions around the world and dozens here at Australian coal mines and gas pipelines.
Getting coal & gas to Methane Zero as soon as possible will help reduce climate impacts in the next few decades.