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Nepal’s Cabinet plans to hold a meeting at the base camp of Mt. Everest to highlight the threat of climate change and rising global temperatures, which is causing glaciers in the Himalayas to melt at an alarming rate.

The climate summit just below the world’s highest summit will hopefully draw international attention to the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions, just as the Maldives’ recent underwater meeting dramatically signaled the need for action at the upcoming UN climate conference. 

The Himalayas holds the planet’s largest body of ice outside the polar ice caps and hundreds of millions of people depend upon the water that the glaciers feed into several of the world’s major rivers.  If we fail to cut global emissions and the glaciers retreat continue to retreat at such a rapid rate, the consequences would be devastating.  According to RK Pachauri, the Nobel Prize-winning Indian scientist who heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

There’s the possibility that if we don’t do something about stabilising the earth’s climate then these glaciers could easily vanish in the next few decades.

People around the world, from the ocean floor to the mountain tops, are raising the climate alarm and hopefully together we can work towards a better, more sustainable future for our planet.  Use the act section below to find out what you can do to help.