The fastest climate lever is a repair ticket

Most climate interventions are long loans: you cut emissions today and the cooling arrives decades later, for people not yet born. Methane is the exception. It breaks down in roughly a dozen years, so a leak you fix this quarter stops warming this decade.

The physics, briefly: molecule for molecule, methane traps something like 80 times more heat than CO₂ over a 20-year window. CO₂ is the mortgage. Methane is the overdraft fee you can simply stop triggering.

Where it leaks: roughly a third of human-caused methane comes from oil and gas operations — wells, compressors, pipelines — with agriculture and landfills covering most of the rest. The fossil share is the cheapest place to start.

Emissions are lumpy. In many basins, a handful of "super-emitter" events — a stuck dump valve, an unlit flare — drive an outsized share of total leakage. You don't fix a basin with averages; you fix it with work orders.

Monitoring changed first. Satellites like GHGSat and Copernicus Sentinel-5P now spot plumes from orbit, and regulators increasingly turn detections into repair notices. MethaneSAT's loss in 2025 stung, but the watch is plural now. Opacity isn't a shield anymore.

The economics are the quiet scandal: leaked methane is literally product. Repeated IEA analysis finds a large share of oil-and-gas fixes would pay for themselves. We warm the planet and burn money with the same molecule.

What scaling looks like: leak detection and repair programs, replacing high-bleed pneumatics, ending routine flaring, landfill gas capture. None exotic, all deployable this decade — which is precisely the point.

The honest caveat, because I refuse both doom and denial: methane cuts don't replace decarbonization. CO₂ accumulates; methane only buys time and shaves near-term warming. It's both/and, never either/or.

One number to watch: the Global Methane Pledge targets about a 30% cut from 2020 levels by 2030, and current tracking suggests we're behind pace. Tightening bolts isn't poetic. It's one of the fastest ways to give this century some breathing room.