Thawing of the Permafrost: Countdown to a Climate Catastrophe, Part 1 of 2

Permafrost covers are widespread in the Arctic regions of Siberia, Canada, Greenland, and Alaska. They play a vital role in stabilizing the planet’s climate by functioning as a cover that seals in gas hydrates, which are crystalline solids containing huge amounts of carbon-based elements.

It’s worrying that the rapid melting of permafrost, caused by high temperatures, can lead to dramatic changes in the atmosphere. Climatologists have long viewed the thawing of the Arctic’s permafrost as a ticking “climate time bomb.” Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken on this topic many times, saying, “If the methane in the whole world, under our feet, is one day released, then we’re all gone. Because it’s heating up now, and all this permafrost and whatever that protected the methane, hiding the methane gas before, could be all melted, and sooner maybe than we think. And then that’s it. That will be sudden. It’s already releasing some.

We don’t need to wait too long if that happens. (Yes, we pray that the world will be vegan so that we can avert that.) Yes. That’s why we’re praying every day one hour.”

Leneisja Jungsberg, a research fellow at Nordregio, highlighted the urgency of the situation, saying, “Permafrost thaw is a ticking bomb for the climate. The increase in permafrost thaw – caused by global warming – has the potential to release substantial amounts of sealed carbon dioxide and methane, which is a very powerful greenhouse gas. This, in turn, intensifies climate change. It’s a vicious circle.”

Supreme Master Ching Hai has often discussed the dangers caused by the melting of the permafrost and what we can all do to stop climate change. “Meanwhile, potent methane gas, once frozen beneath the Earth, has become a ticking time bomb due to rising temperatures in the Arctic and is now set to trigger runaway climate change. We are living [in]the worst-case scenario and the scientists are crying out for us to hit the emergency brake now, and hard. So it’s the emergency brake that we need, and the place that we need, and the place to start is the animal-people livestock industry. Because the animal-people livestock industry, animal-people raising, generates the largest human-made source of methane. It is also a very large source of black carbon, or soot, and accounts for at least 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions that heat up our planet. So if we stop the animal-people livestock industry, then we will stop global warming – fast and simple.”