Climate Change & Melting Polar Ice Caps Will Cost All Of Us And World $24 Trillion By 2020

Climate change is a massive problem that we need global cooperation to solve. But that doesn't mean the way will be easy or cheap.

In fact, new research suggests the melting of Arctic ice is likely to add another $24 trillion to the short term immediate cost of climate change.

According to a new report published in the journal Nature Communications, we're likely to incur this cost even if we meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Even worse, if we take no further action to curb the influx of greenhouse gases, that extra cost could increase to $67 trillion by 2300.

The paper, headed by Dmitry Yumashev of Lancaster University, found that there were two key factors in this cycle. One is that, as the Arctic permafrost thaws, greenhouse gas emissions will be emitted from whatever is trapped in its soil. Aside from all those heat-trapping gases however, the Artic's surface albedo also decreases. This is the amount of sunlight, and therefore heat reflected back by the white ice. Both of these together can raise the costs of climate change by about 5 percent.

As such, we will be spending more money to offset climate change the longer we take to tackle this issue. It could range anywhere from $600 trillion, to $2,100 trillion by 2300.

"Our findings support the need for more proactive mitigation measures to keep global temperature rise well below 2¡ãC," Yumashev said in a statement. That means adopting renewable energy, planting more forests, and reducing our pollution outputs in general.