8 Reasons Why You Should Care About Super Pollutants

By eliminating super pollutants, we would remove the annual emissions equivalent of up to 9 million cars from our nation’s roads.

The main pollutants that are responsible for global warming include hydrofluorocarbons, black carbon, and methane.

Super pollutants leak from landfills and oil and gas exploration, refrigerators and air conditioners, diesel engines, and millions of traditional cookstoves all over the developing world.

If we work to reduce super pollutants emissions, we could cut the rate of sea level rise by 25 percent.

U.S. companies have led the way in developing new refrigerants that don’t cause any damage to the climate, inexpensive stoves that don’t create black carbon, and systems that keep methane from seeping out of the ground during drilling.

If emissions of super pollutants don’t change, measurements suggest that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free during summer months in the next 10-20 years. That spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R for local wildlife and ecosystems.

Super pollutants have a relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide and other longer-lived greenhouse gases, and we can get rid of them quicker.

The United States has led the world in pioneering new technologies needed to drive these reductions.