How to pull the emergency brake on global warming | Mohamed A. Sultan

Most of us understand carbon dioxide. It's the headline pollutant. The number everyone tracks. But methane, the lesser known gas hiding in landfills and leaking from pipelines, is quietly shaping a climate future in ways that are both urgent and deeply human. And when it comes to methane, here's the part that's been catching my attention. Some of the most powerful opportunities to reduce methane are emerging outside of the

world's biggest emitters. Instead of wealthier nations leading the charge, new models for resilience are already being built in the places where development and climate change collide every single day.

I'm Sheryl Dorsey and this is TED Tech, a podcast from TED. Today's talk looks at methane, not as an abstract scientific concept, but as something lived. Something that shows up in everyday places. The landfill near a school.

The rice field a family depends on. The flare burning just beyond someone's backyard. It's about what happens when climate vulnerability and economic transition sit side by side. But it's also about possibility.

On the African continent, where energy systems are shifting and cities are rethinking waste, we're seeing early signs of what happens when communities lead, and when development and climate action aren't in conflict, but in conversation. Our speaker, sustainable strategist, Muhammad A. Sultan, brings a deeply grounded perspective

– part policy, part lived experience, part vision for what a low methane future could mean for people who carry the heaviest burdens of climate change. Before we get into the talk, a quick break from our sponsors. for this episode comes from the University of Illinois Geese College of Business online

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College of Business IMBA program. My current role is Channel Business Development Manager working at a company focusing on sustainability. And I'm also a proud mom of two beautiful boys. Motherhood is like an intense leadership letter tray. I learned in a hard way how to be resilient and how to handle this crisis management under pressure.

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I was able to define what the leadership is and how can I be more effectively collaborating with other people as a team. My family is also a big part of this journey. I wanted to be seen by my child that mom is always trying hard and mom is always learning. And recently I noticed that every time I'm taking classes during the evening, I see them reading books and I see them doing some work on their own. So I felt like, oh, maybe I'm really modeling the value of life-long learning.

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Join 15 million customers internationally. Be smart. Get wise. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. Tease and seize apply. And now, Mohammed Sultan takes the TED stage. Have you ever smelled a landfill?

Well, that smell is probably not the worst thing that it produces. Methane gases. And you cannot see or smell it until it catches fire. And that's unfortunately what's been happening

in many cities across the continent. And Dakar and Akra and Kampala and Musaka and recently at the Peter Madditsburg landfill in South Africa. I'll just imagine being one of the thousands of kids

affected by that fire. Every breath you take is kind of a tighter chest, a sharper headache. It's really unacceptable.

And these landfills, they catch fire for many reasons. One of them is that we keep sending organic waste there that decays in the absence of oxygen, creating the conditions for messengers to come up with.

There's many ways that we know how to solve this question of dangerous landfills. First of all, stop producing as much waste and sending it there. sort and treat what's already there

and radically improve the governance of those sites. Doing that homework has immediate benefits, particularly for populations living nearby. It improves their quality and it reduces the risk of fire.

And it turns out that addressing methane out of these landfills plays a very important role in tackling the global question of climate change. I'm a social and economic development professional.

I've spent the bulk of my career looking at how this continent transforms