Media release - Monday August 11

The world’s fastest Mount Everest climber, Pemba Dorje Sherpa, today called on the Rudd Government to halve Australia’s carbon pollution by the middle of the decade to help stop the big melt in the Himalayas.

Mr Sherpa said his home was changing because of global warming.

“The glaciers around Everest are disappearing and our way of life is being threatened,” he said.

High Stakes: Climate Change, the Himalayas, Asia and Australia, August 2009

Compiled by David Spratt and Damien Lawson for Friends of the Earth Australia

Find out about climate change in the 'roof of the world' and what it means for Australia and Asia.

Hear Pemba Dorje Sherpa, holder of the world record for the fastest climb of Mount Everest, talk about his experience of global warming in the Himalayas. He is joined by environmental lawyer and activist Prakash Sharma, Pro Public Nepal.

Global warming is already having a big impact on Mount Everest and the Himalayas. Glaciers are melting creating floods and danger for the local people. But the big melt also means a big dry as these 'water towers' of Asia lose their capacity to provide water to the giant rivers in the summer months. Eventually rivers like the Ganges in India and the Yellow River in China will lose their dry season flow and the billion people in these river basins will lose their water security.

In the lead up to Copenhagen, the tour will also examine how a global climate action can be developed that will prevent the big melt in the Himalayas and halt global warming.

The tour will coincide with the release of a new Friends of the Earth report: High Stakes – Climate change, the Himalayas, Asia and Australia.