St. Paul (Minnesota) [USA], January 9: As concerns about climate change continue to grow, a determined high school student has taken matters into their own hands. Ivanka Sonkusare, a student at Woodbury High School, Minnesota, has launched MethaneMatters, an innovative initiative aimed at spreading awareness about methane emissions, their sources, impact, and mitigation strategies.
MethaneMatters seeks to educate and empower individuals, particularly youth, to take action against methane pollution. Through a comprehensive website (https://methanematters.earth), dedicated youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@MethaneMatters) social media campaigns, and community outreach programs, MethaneMatters will provide accurate information, resources, and tools to help reduce methane emissions.
“I was very concerned to learn that methane is a potent greenhouse gas, responsible for nearly 30% of global warming and is 28 times more potent than CO2,” said Ivanka Sonkusare, Founder of MethaneMatters. “As a young person, I feel a sense of responsibility to act. MethaneMatters is my attempt to make a difference and inspire others to join me.”
Ivanka has been doing advanced research in this space to better understand the process of methane production in dairy and livestock animals and ways to mitigate it. In the summer of 2023, she started her research under Dr. Jo Heuschele who is a Research Agronomist at US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and also an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. During the summer of 2024, she worked at Cornell University under Dr. Joe McFadden at his lab where she got a chance to work with some of the latest equipment like Respiration Chambers and GreenFeed which are used for methane quantifications and estimations. “My passion in this area only intensified when I got to know that dairy and livestock animals are responsible for more than 40 percent of the methane emissions,” says Ivanka.
MethaneMatters is working on various fronts. Its key objectives are raising awareness about methane emissions, their impact on the environment, and educating individuals about methane sources, including agriculture, natural gas systems, and landfills. It also aims to promote effective mitigation strategies, such as methane capture and reduction technologies and encouraging community involvement and advocacy for methane-reducing policies.
Ivanka’s Youtube channel MethaneMatters has already gotten more than 2000 views in a matter of a few months. Ivanka is also engaging on a continuous basis with different stakeholders like policy makers, dairy farm owners, academicians, researchers, industrialists to share her ideas and perspective and also learn from them. She has already received encouraging responses from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. They appreciated her for her hard work and efforts at such a young age and promised the right policy changes to curb methane emissions from all types of sources. She has also presented at a Model UN conference on the topic of climate and sustainability. Ivanka is determined to continue with her passion in this space and plans to do her studies and advanced research from a reputed university in the US.
To learn more about MethaneMatters and get involved, please visit https://methanematters.earth
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