Chilling message from
wear-nothing activists to do-nothing politicians
18 August 2007 - Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland
— An emergency provokes extreme responses:
human beings in danger will abandon social
niceties, etiquette, and the norms of acceptable
behaviour to raise an alarm any way they
can when lives are in danger. Today, six
hundred people shed their clothes on a glacier
in the Swiss Alps to bodily cry out for
help against a planetary emergency: global
warming.
Parental warning: the story below contains
nudity
The nude volunteers posed for us and renowned
naked "installation" artist Spencer
Tunick on the Aletsch Glacier.
Without clothes, the human body is vulnerable,
exposed, its life or death at the whim of
the elements. Global warming is stripping
away our glaciers and leaving our entire
planet vulnerable to extreme weather, floods,
sea-level rise, global decreases in carrying
capacity and agricultural production, fresh
water shortages, disease and mass human
dislocations.
If global warming continues at its current
rate, most glaciers in Switzerland will
completely disappear by 2080, leaving nothing
but valleys and slopes strewn with rock
debris. Over the last 150 years, alpine
glaciers have reduced in size by approximately
one third of their surface and half of their
mass, and this melting is accelerating.
The Aletsch Glacier retreated 115 meters
(377 feet) in a single year from 2005 to
2006.
Eight years to act
According to the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) the world only
has eight years remaining to take the urgent
action needed to curb catastrophic climate
change. Without swift action, the damage
could become irreversible. Never before
has humanity been forced to grapple with
such an immense environmental crisis.
Climate change now requires fast and courageous
political decisions to radically cut green-house
gas emissions and stabilise global warming.
Governments around the world must know that
the people they represent expect and demand
them to take action.
Known around the world for his installations,
Spencer Tunick wants people to know that
global climate change is not an abstract
issue, but a hazardous threat which affects
us all.
"I want my images to go more than
skin-deep. I want the viewers to feel the
vulnerability of their existence and how
it relates closely to the sensitivity of
the world's glaciers", he said.
Barely active
These volunteers had the bravery to do something
to raise the alarm. Not enough people do.
What are you doing? You don't need to get
naked on a glacier to be part of the energy
[r]evolution. You can sign up for the Greenpeace
Seven Steps campaign and start easy: with
simple ways to improve your energy efficiency.
If you are a student, you can set up a Solar
Generation group on your university campus.
Vote for candidates that are willing to
take on the coal and oil industry. Stand
in front of a bulldozer to stop the build
of a new coal-fired plant. Change the way
you use energy. Install solar panels.
Or you can come up with your own audacious
means to raise the alarm.
You may not need to get naked, but you
do need to roll up your sleeves.
+ More
Bering witness in a mini-sub
14 August 2007 - Alaska, United States
— Our good ship Esperanza is currently out
in the Bering Sea, one of the world's wildest
oceans. Situated between Alaska and Kamchatka
at the western edge of Russia, the Bering
covers over 2 million square km of the northernmost
region of the Pacific Ocean, and is home
to some of the largest unexplored submarine
canyons on the planet.
The Esperanza is returning to the region
to continue research work begun in 2006
- exposing the impacts of overfishing, and
documenting some of these previously unexplored
canyon habitats. And this time, to make
life a little easier and even more exciting
Esperanza is equipped with two new mini-submarines
capable of diving over 1,000 metres to bring
back photos and video from the depths.
So far large tracts of cold-water corals
are being found at between 50 to 1,000 metres.
These slow-growing colonies can have lifespans
of hundreds or even thousands of years,
and act as refuges for all kinds of fish
species. They are crucial to the continued
existence of this ocean ecosystem, but are
also extremely vulnerable to being wiped
out by one drag from a bottom trawler's
net.
Join the Espy and crew on the Bering Witness
2007 tour as they make a compelling case
for the creation of marine reserves to ensure
the conservation of these important habitats,
which are believed to contain species found
nowhere else on earth. Check out the crew's
weblog.
