Tackling Climate Change Requires Looking Beyond Carbon

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced a $15 million, six-country coalition dedicated to curbing non-carbon dioxide pollutants that cause global warming.

The Climate and Clean Air Coalition will target greenhouse gases such as methane and soot, which only remain in the atmosphere for days or weeks— unlike carbon dioxide, which lasts generations. However, they still contribute mightily to climate change, causing between 30 and 40 percent of human-induced warming. Curbing those substances, scientists and activists say, could slow atmospheric warming 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 while also increasing crop yields and preventing hundreds of thousands of related deaths from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.