Our climate system is on the brink of collapse, and we have a very limited window of opportunity to mitigate dangerous climate change.

The rapidly shrinking time frames for action mean that we must focus intensely on reducing methane.

Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas and one of the most powerful. Methane's global warming potential is 82.5-times stronger per mass unit than carbon dioxide (CO2) on a 20-year timescale, and 28-36-times more powerful over 100 years. Equally important is the time methane survives once released into the atmosphere. Unlike CO2, which stays in the atmosphere for centuries or even millennia, methane has a climate response of only about 12 years, after which it degrades to CO2 and water vapour.

Therefore, a rapid reduction in methane emissions will slow the rate of warming in the short term. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report indicates that the scale of any reduction in global methane emissions could decide whether global warming can be kept below 1.5 degree Celsius and whether tipping points, which would accelerate irreversible climate change, could be avoided.

In 2018, the IPCC said the world only had until 2030 to achieve the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase goal. According to UNEP's Global Methane Assessment, 45% of global methane emissions must be cut this decade to stay within this frame.