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CONSERVATION GROUPS’ COMMENTS <br />UNCOMPAHGRE FIELD OFFICE RMP AND DEIS <br />30 <br />conditions as the Secretary shall determine.”). BLM also notes in the ANPR that Obama <br />Administration climate policies support the control or elimination of methane pollution from coal <br />mines: <br /> <br />[R]educing [waste mine methane] venting would reduce emissions of a potent <br />greenhouse gas, consistent with the President’s Climate Action Plan— Strategy to <br />Reduce Methane Emissions (March 2014) and Secretarial Order 3289, <br />Amendment No. 1 (“Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change on America’s <br />Water, Land, and other Natural and Cultural Resources,” dated February 22, <br />2010). <br /> <br />79 Fed. Reg. at 23,924. <br />2. It Is Critically Important To Reduce Methane Emissions In Order To <br />Limit Climate Damages. <br /> <br />There is increasing scientific evidence that for humanity to have a chance to keep climate <br />change within tolerable levels (well below 2 °C above preindustrial times), governments around <br />the world must act quickly to reduce methane emissions in particular.87 Part of that consensus is <br />that methane pollution is more damaging than previously thought. The Fifth Assessment Report <br />of the IPCC in 2013 concluded that methane is a much more potent driver of climate change than <br />scientists understood it to be just a few years ago—with a global warming potential as much as <br />36 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time frame, and 87 times greater than CO2 <br />over a 20-year time frame, as detailed below. <br /> <br />In 2013, climate scientists working with the IPCC concluded that approximately one- <br />third of the anthropogenic climate change we are experiencing today is attributable to methane <br />and other short-lived climate pollutants, and about thirty percent of the warming we will <br />experience over the next two decades as a result of that year’s greenhouse gas emissions will <br />come from methane.88 Climate scientists now recognize that avoiding catastrophic climate <br />change will require both a long-term strategy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and near-term <br />action to mitigate methane and similar “accelerants” of climate change. As a 2013 article in the <br />journal Science stated: “The only way to permanently slow warming is through lowering <br /> <br />87 Bill McKibben, Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry, The Nation (Mar. 23, 2016), <br />available at: http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying-new-chemistry/ <br />(attached as Exhibit 28). 88 Thomas Stocker et al., Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of <br />Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate <br />Change (2013), available at: <br />http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_ALL_FINAL.pdf (attached as <br />Exhibit 113).