Swiss Alps postcards sent to world leaders, calling for climate change fight

JUNGFRAUJOCH, Switzerland, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Some 900 postcards from youths all over the world were stamped and sent on Wednesday from Europe's highest postbox 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 Swiss Jungfraujoch to raise awareness worldwide of the emergency and necessity to fight climate change.

The 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 (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 degrees Celsius, a target recently set by the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change (IPCC).

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 (COP24) in Poland last December, to collect hand-written anti-climate-change messages by world's youth representatives there.

On Wednesday, about 900 of those postcards, some of which also carrying e-mail messages by youths from around the world, were stamped and sent from Europe's highest postbox on the Jungfraujoch 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 Daniel Maselli, with the SDC, the messages will go to an array of global leaders, including the UN secretary-general, the German chancellor, and the British prime minister.

"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," Daniel said.

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 location, the Aletsch glacier, situated at an altitude of more than 3,400 meters, has been a perfect example of climate change impact, Gass said. Stretching over 23 km, the Aletsch 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 in Switzerland have shown that the Aletsch glacier, 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. According to the SDC, many of the world's glaciers are shrinking rapidly and will disappear completely in the near future.