COP26: Australia does not sign the methane pact
Audio 01:28
Cattle farming has a major role in methane emissions on the planet.
AFP / File
By: Altin Lazaj
1 min
The COP26 is open Sunday October 31 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Ahead of this great global climate event, Australia sent a negative signal.
The country refuses to sign the methane pact proposed by the European Union and the United States.
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Australia will not join the US-European project which aims to reduce methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030. Several countries have yet promised to subscribe to this initiative such as New Zealand, the Saudi Arabia or Canada.
The Australian government fears that such a commitment could have consequences on the farms in the country, Australia is one of the first exporters of meat in the world.
Livestock are considered to be the main cause of methane emissions.
The other reason why the Australian government refuses to sign this project is that it does not want to threaten its extraction of fossil materials.
Australia is a major producer of gas and coal, two industries that also emit a lot of methane into the atmosphere.
The weight of methane in greenhouse gases
However, there is an urgent need: greenhouse gas concentrations reached record highs last year.
Methane, second after CO2 in terms of emission, has a much more powerful warming effect than that of carbon dioxide.
The world meteorological organization warns: with such a rate of greenhouse gas emissions, the rise in temperatures at the end of the century would be well above the objectives of the Paris Agreement, which aimed at 2 degrees Celsius maximum.
Climate experts estimate that to achieve this goal, global production of gas and oil would have to be reduced by 3% per year until 2050 and that of coal by 7%.
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