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Research shows that so-called biodegradable products are actually doing more harm than good in landfills, because they are releasing a powerful greenhouse gas as they break down. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines call for products marked as “biodegradable” to decompose within "a reasonably short period of time" after disposal. But such rapid degradation may actually be environmentally harmful, because federal regulations do not require landfills that collect methane to install gas collection systems for at least two years after the waste is buried.
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Methane is one of the most highly potent greenhouse gases–25-33 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. For reasons we don’t yet understand, occasionally huge amounts of methane are outgassed from places where they are stored on Earth (such as peat bogs and permafrost) and on the ocean floor, warming the atmosphere considerably. On Coast to Coast AM last week, Whitley told us what to look for when this process starts: Record high temperatures in the northern Arctic, beginning this summer.
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What is "fracking?" It’s removing natural gas from the ground–and there is LOTS of it right here in the US, so if we produce cars that run on natural gas (as lots of trucks do already), then we can solve our oil dependency problems. HOWEVER, fracking uses LOTS of water (which we are ALSO short on) AND it is not necessarily emission-free.
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Wetlands, permafrost, termites, oceans and freshwater are all natural sources of the potent greenhouse gas methane. However, the majority of the methane that is changing our climate is caused by human-related activities such as fossil fuel production, biomass burning, waste management and animal husbandry (due to cow farts). The release of methane into the atmosphere by cattle and other large grazing mammals is estimated to account for 12 to 17% of the total global methane release.
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