Our Climate’s Wild Card

The New York Review of Books  |  Jonathan Mingle

In mid-October 2015, residents of Porter Ranch in northwestern Los Angeles experienced headaches, nausea, and nosebleeds due to a massive methane leak at Southern California Gas's Aliso Canyon facility. This depleted oil field, the second-largest natural gas storage system in the US, released approximately six billion cubic feet of natural gas, or 109,000 metric tons of methane, by the time it was plugged on February 18.

Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency, leading to the evacuation of nearly 10,000 residents. For four months, Aliso Canyon was the largest known source of human-caused methane emissions in the US, effectively doubling the methane emission rate for the entire Los Angeles area. This event, comparable to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout, garnered global headlines before the December 2015 Paris Agreement, yet methane's significant contribution to climate change—responsible for 30 percent of global warming—remains largely overlooked a decade later. The article reviews Rob Jackson's book, "Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere."

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