Study: Simple measures could reduce global warming, save lives

Many of the measures would be inexpensive, Shindell said. For instance, farmers in the developing world often burn agricultural waste, but plowing it under instead would cost almost nothing.

Other interventions, such as capping landfills to trap methane, would be more costly.

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Several policy experts said that in the absence of a global treaty to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the new study should spur national governments to smaller actions.

“This great news could not come at a better time for climate protection,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the D.C.-based Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.

Zaelke said the proposed measures are particularly important for the world’s most vulnerable regions, such as the Arctic, which has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world over the past half-century, and the Himalayas, which have warmed three times as fast.

But even advocates of the strategy warned that world leaders have not yet shown the political will to move ahead.

Brooks Yeager, executive vice president for policy for the advocacy group Clean Air-Cool Planet, said the new study shows that “the technical means to get these reductions are clear.” But, he added, “the bad news is it’s not as easy as it sounds.”

For instance, Yeager said that countries that make up the Arctic Council, including the United States, pledged in 2009 to reduce black carbon. But since then, the Obama administration has cut back on domestic efforts to phase out dirtier diesel engines because of budget constraints. Until 2009, Congress had appropriated between $75 million and $150 million for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, which gave grants to retire or retrofit polluting diesel vehicles. The program got a boost to $300 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but it has not received any more money since.

State Department spokeswoman Emily Cain said the United States has spent $60 million to support methane reduction projects overseas and has pledged to spend an additional $50 million over the next five years. The administration has also committed $5 million to an Arctic Council initiative to reduce black carbon emissions in Russia.

Yeager and Shindell said that reducing methane and soot, while laudable as a short-term strategy for dampening global warming, would not solve the long-term problem.

“I think it’s a little dangerous to think you can do this instead of reducing carbon dioxide,” Yaeger said. “If you don’t reduce carbon dioxide, the benefits of reducing these [pollutants] will recede into the background and be overwhelmed by carbon.”