The rapidly melting Arctic sea ice and permafrost is an “economic time bomb” likely to cost the world at least $60tn, say researchers who have started to calculate the financial consequences.
A record decline in Arctic sea ice has, until now, been widely seen as economically beneficial, as it opens up shipping lanes and the possibility of drilling in a region thought to contain 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13 per cent of its undiscovered oil.
However, the Arctic ice’s pivotal role in regulating ocean currents and climate means, as it melts, it is likely to cause changes that will damage crops, flood properties and wreck infrastructure around the world, according to research by academics at the UK’s University of Cambridge and Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.