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=1822http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2009/Climate-benefits-of-changing-diet.html