Glacier protest

Print this story Email to a friend

They were protesting against global warming, but the volunteers gathered in the Swiss Alps 18th August weren’t breaking a sweat. To draw attention to Switzerland’s melting glaciers, hundreds of people from all over Europe were photographed lying and standing naked on the Aletsch glacier.
Spencer Tunick, an artist from New York, has become famous for his pictures of masses of naked people in different settings. This time he had teamed up with the environmental campaigners in Greenpeace and convinced about 600 people to be his “living sculptures”.

For Tunick the naked people in the icy environment is a good symbol of the frailty of the glaciers. “Humans will be vulnerable just as the glacier is vulnerable (…) unless we can make a difference” he said. 

Glaciers around the world have become an obvious sign of climate change, as the warmer weather is causing them to literally disappear in front of our eyes. The Aletsch glacier is around 23 km long, but 115 meters of it melted away in just one year between 2005 and 2006. The Swiss glaciers are predicted to disappear by 2080 unless radical action is taken towards the causes of climate change.

Click here for a Greenpeace short film of the glacier living sculptures and an interview with the artist.

Photo from AFP, sources: The Guardian http://www.umweltschutz-news.de  http://www.krone.at