Stripping for the Environment

Nearly 600 volunteers have stripped for the camera on a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps for a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change.

Greenpeace, which commissioned the photo shoot by world-renowned photographer Spencer Tunick, says the volunteers turned up under blue skies near the foot of the Aletsch glacier, a protected UNESCO World Heritage site.

Nicolas de Roten of Greenpeace Switzerland counted almost 600 people in attendance. "It's relatively chilly but that doesn't seem to be disturbing them," he said.

Greenpeace says the human body is as vulnerable as glaciers like the Aletsch in southern Switzerland - which is shrinking by more than 100 metres a year - and the world's environment.

Shrinking was probably an unfortunate term to use in this story. . .