SYANGBOCHE, Nepal — Nepal’s top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks Friday and held a Cabinet meeting amid Mount Everest’s frigid, thin air to highlight the danger global warming poses to glaciers, ahead of next week’s U.N. climate-change talks.
The government billed it as the world’s highest Cabinet meeting. The ministers, wearing yellow oxygen masks and purple sashes reading, “Save the Himalayas,” sat at folding tables on a plateau at an altitude of 17,192 feet next to Everest base camp, the starting point for climbers seeking to scale the peak.
They posed for pictures, signed a commitment to tighten environmental regulations — and quickly flew away.
Scientists say the Himalayan glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, creating lakes with walls that could burst and flood villages below. Melting ice and snow also make the routes for mountaineers less stable and more difficult to follow.
