The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) is a voluntary assistance program that helps to reduce methane emissions from landfills by encouraging the recovery and beneficial use of landfill gas (LFG) as an energy resource. LFG contains methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can be captured and used to fuel power plants, manufacturing facilities, vehicles, homes, and more. By joining LMOP, companies, state agencies, organizations, landfills, and communities gain access to a vast network of industry experts and practitioners, as well as to various technical and marketing resources that can help with LFG energy project development.
http://www.epa.gov/lmop/Yes, methane is a potent GHG.
Yes there are problems associated with retrieving it from landfills.
However, there is a larger view.
Part of creating a sustainable way of life requires us to recycle our wastes instead of discarding them and using fresh raw materials in creating new products and yet more wastes.
The *long term* idea (in this specific instance) is to utilize environmental carbon instead of mining and releasing more carbon in the form of fossil fuels. Currently, the energy inputs that create these landfill wastes are primarily fossil fuels - carbon that is is truly sequestered. Landfills, on the other hand, do a very poor job of sequestering either methane or CO2. Some methods of processing landfill materials are reasonably successful, but the reality is that worldwide, landfill emissions are a significant contributor to GHG emissions.
There are several aspects to dealing with this matter, but the short version is that we need to be much more effective at separating and recycling our waste streams and treat them as a resource.
In this particular, if we use methane from a landfill we are going to be displacing carbon from fossil fuels. As you note, because of contaminants landfill methane is not as desirable as other waste streams such as methane from sewage and agricultural wastes might be but it is not an idea to be discarded out of hand.
And it certainly isn't an idea that should be discarded because of climate change.
List of entries for search of "landfill methane climate" at EPA:
http://nlquery.epa.gov/epasearch/epasearch?areaname=&areacontacts=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fepahome%2Fcomments.htm&areasearchurl=&result_template=epafiles_default.xsl&action=filtersearch&filter=&typeofsearch=epa&querytext=landfill+methane+climate&GO=SEARCH