PAONIA — Taut tarps stretch across the meadow. An R2D2-sized valve sticks out of the ground. A long pipe runs down a slope, connecting the valve to a humming, red-hot tube.

“It’s satisfyingly analogue. Pipe and flame,” said Auden Schendler, a climate activist who walks the talk with his co-ownership of a methane-destruction project atop a dormant coal mine above Paonia. “There are a lot of people working on micro climate solutions right now. This is a macro solution and it’s a model for the rest of the world.”

Methane destruction is not terribly complicated. The owners of the 117-acre Bowie No. 1 coal mine — former Aspen Skiing Co. execs Schendler and Matt Jones and methane-hunting scientist Chris Caskey — are hoping their pioneering project on a grassy slope a half-mile from downtown Pa

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