Swiss Alps postcards urge move for climate

JUNGFRAUJOCH, Switzerland－Nearly 900 postcards from youths all over the world were stamped and mailed on Wednesday from Europe's highest mailbox on the Jungfraujoch peak, Switzerland, to global leaders, calling for action against climate change.

Last November, a gigantic postcard breaking the Guinness Worlds Records was staged just under the 3,466-meter-high Jungfraujoch to raise awareness worldwide of the emergency and necessity to fight climate change.

That huge postcard was composed of 125,000 small cards, each with drawings, messages and wishes of fighting climate change from children and youngsters from 35 countries worldwide, mostly developing countries, according to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, or SDC, the event's organizer.

At the center of the postcard was a huge slogan that read "STOP GLOBAL WARMING #1.5 C" to signify the goal of limiting global warming to a maximum of 1.5 C, a target recently set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It shows that under certain conditions, it's still possible to keep the impacts of climate change at a tolerable level.

Copies of a special postcard, made of images of the record-breaking one, were later brought to the UN Climate Conference, or COP24, in Poland in December, to collect handwritten anti-climate-change messages by world's youth representatives there.

On Wednesday, about 900 of those postcards, some also carrying e-mail messages by youths from around the world, were stamped and sent from Europe's highest mailbox to heads of government, business leaders, and heads of international organizations in 11 countries, urging for immediate policies and action against climate change.

According to SDC's Daniel Maselli, "The youths have started moving. They have raised their voices since COP24. They want to see decision-makers taking serious measures to reduce CO2 emissions worldwide. They want to have a future."

Two Swiss teenagers, Sarangan and Selma, both 17 and helping to stamp the postcards at Jungfraujoch, also voiced their calls for people to drive electric cars, which would be better for global warming, and for governments to make new rules and regulations to reduce CO2 emissions.

The event's high-rise location on the Aletsch Glacier has been a perfect example of climate change impact, Gass said. Stretching over 23 kilometers, the glacier in the Swiss canton of Valais is the longest in Europe, measuring 1.5 km wide on average and 900 meters at its thickest point.

Scientific studies have shown that Aletsch, together with the vast majority of glaciers in central Switzerland, are melting at an ever-quickening pace and could almost disappear by the end of this century.

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