Climate Change Will Not Even Be On G7 Agenda

IQALUIT, Nunavut - Climate change is not on the official agenda of the G7 meeting, but activists say a new report released as some participants took a dog-sled run proves it should be. The U.S.-based Pew Environmental Group said it has quantified for the first time the economic costs of the Arctic's warming and it adds up to at least US$2.4 trillion over the next 40 years.

Economist Eban Goldstein of Bard College in New York says the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. And he says the combination of melting ice, increased sunlight absorption by darker barren ground and the release of methane as the permafrost thaws will this year warm the earth the equivalent of 40 per cent of total U.S. industrial emissions.

There was scant evidence of melting outside, where Finance Minister Jim Flaherty led several of his guests on a traditional dog-sled ride over frozen Frobisher Bay.

But locals here uniformly testify of the changes they've observed to weather over the past few decades, particularly earlier-than-normal spring thaws.

EDIT

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/greenpage/environment/83659482.html

commitment and action to do something good.

so naturally they are going to discuss the global financial crisis.

called Frozen in Frobisher Bay, in which greed for oil leads to the death of a ship's crew. It's justly unknown, because it's not very good.

Strange is a whaler's fate
To be saved from the raging waves
Only to waste away
Frozen in Frobisher Bay.