The Rice Methane Society

Russell Tran

There needs to be a long-term society for defending against extreme catastrophic risks of runaway climate change caused by methane.

Day-to-day, this society would work to reduce methane emissions from rice paddies. Rice paddies, as flooded anaerobic environments, are responsible for 13% of annual anthropogenic methane emissions globally, or 3% of the climate change problem.

Rice methane emissions are currently one of the least tractable areas to work on for climate change. The problem is distributed over 144 million rice farms in some of the most rural places in the world, where expensive technological solutions are least likely to hold up. If you’re working on climate change, you’re more likely to make meaningful progress in other areas, such as electrification of homes, meat alternatives, or natural gas leaks.

So why bother? For starters, 3% of carbon emissions is not trivial on a planetary scale, and if we are to end climate change, ultimately some group of people will have to get around to solving this problem. So better to start now. But more importantly, the technology we need to address rice methane is identical to the technology we need to hedge against potential doomsday scenarios that may arise from climate change. Namely, this technology can be used to:

1) Fight methane emissions from permafrost melt if that becomes a disastrous runaway issue.

2) Create an emergency geoengineering lever that is more socially acceptable than alternatives like solar radiation management or deep ocean algal blooms: You can stop natural methane emissions from wetlands, which would effectively subtract 16 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per year. (We currently emit ~36 Gt CO2e/yr).

I am looking to get in touch with someone who would be willing to found this society. The first project by this group would be to invent cheaper hardware and methods to measure methane emissions from individual rice paddies, since the current state of the art is too expensive: it costs $70,000 and requires sophisticated training to use.

We are able to find grants for this society, likely from the Effective Altruism community. We just need to grow this group and do the work!

Email contact [at] ricemethane.org

Research directions

1) Develop hardware and methods for measuring methane emissions from rice paddies

2) Given a list of enzymatic inhibitors to methanogenesis, field trial them in rice paddies at various dilutions

3) Field trial oxygenation of rice paddies

4) Field trial various proliferations of methanotrophs in rice paddies

5) Field trial various proliferations of phages in rice paddies