Loss of Arctic ice could cost trillions - 23 Mar 2010  
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The Pew Environmental Group in the USA has released a peer-reviewed report stating that damage from rising seas, floods and heat waves due to the loss of Arctic Sea ice will cost the sectors of agriculture, real estate and insurance up to US$24 trillion by 2050.

The report also estimates that heat waves, flooding and other factors are already resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars lost annually. Report author and resource economist Dr. Eban Goodstein stated, “The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down. Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs.” 

During the December 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in Denmark, the Arctic Council announced new findings that the fastest way to halt the rapid melting of the Arctic is to reduce shorter-lived substances like methane, ground-level ozone and black carbon, and that the best way to ease ground-level ozone, the third most prevalent greenhouse gas, is to decrease methane.

Jonas Gahr Støre - Minister of Foreign Affairs, Norway, Arctic Council Leader (M):  If there is one positive message from this report, it’s that doing something about that, if not easy, is manageable.  
So while we wait for the results of curbing CO2 emissions, we need to address the issue of methane, ozone, black carbon, swiftly.

VOICE: With livestock accounting for 36% of human-caused methane, it is clear that decreasing animal agriculture is the fastest way to cool the planet and avoid catastrophe.

The Netherlands’ Environmental Assessment Agency has also calculated that global adoption of a vegan diet would reduce the costs of mitigating climate change a full 80% by 2050.

We appreciate this sobering report, Pew Environmental Group scientists. Let us all step toward the most rapid way to reduce costs and cool the Earth: the life-saving plant-based fare.

In a September 2009 videoconference in South Korea, Supreme Master Ching Hai highlighted as she has on previous occasions the need for quick action to restore Arctic ice and the planet as a whole.

Supreme Master Ching Hai: They call the Arctic ice the refrigerator of the planet, and without it, there will be more droughts and floods in other, even, faraway parts of the world.

The world’s leading climate scientists told us in television interviews that being vegetarian – meaning no animal products – is the single most effective thing an individual can do to stop global warming.

Meat is the number one cause of global warming. So, the number one solution is to stop producing it. So, we all have to be vegan. That is what the science is clearly telling us right now.

If the world’s people become vegan, one of the results is that the ice in the Arctic will be restored, and quickly, along with the repairing of nature in every corner of the planet

Isn’t that wonderful? This is the truth that I could promise you, but we all must act fast, like, yesterday.

http://planetark.org/enviro-news/item/56999
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Protecting_ocean_life
/Arctic_Summary_FINAL.pdf?n=1822
http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2009/Climate-benefits-of-changing-diet.html