If you're thinking of climbing Everest: just don't. Climb some other mountain. There are lots of them. Let's leave this one be.
If you're thinking of climbing Everest: just don't. Climb some other mountain. There are lots of them. Let's leave this one be.
I wonder if a lot of these appeals for people to stop climbing Everest are from climbers who want everyone ELSE to stop climbing Everest.
Maybe I'm a crazy person, but I think that we have a moral obligation to protect the great natural wonders of the world. You can visit them, sure, but only if you do so in a responsible way that ensures their preservation. I do not see how that's possible with Everest any more. History has shown that there is no way to guarantee that you will not be forced (by circumstance alone) to leave trash on the mountain. That trash, by the way, will become essentially unrecoverable: it will likely be there for decades or centuries.
Same thing with your human body: if you want to risk your life, that's fine. If you want to drag others into your idiotic quest to pretend to be Edmund Hillary, that is also fine (as long as they do so full consent and knowing the risks). What is not fine is that if you do die, your body will be essentially unrecoverable, and it will also litter the mountain for decades or centuries.
If you care AT ALL about preserving Everest (and I suspect most people do), I claim there's no morally permissible way to climb this mountain. Leave it alone. Go climb something where you can make sure you can take your refuse with you, and where your dead corpse can be recovered.
Apart from _actually_ being a sacred place for the local people. Tibetan natives called it Chomolungma, meaning "Goddess Mother of Mountains".
There are lots of them, but among ones over 8,000 meters tall, Everest is reportedly one of the safest and least difficult to climb. The best routes for shuttling people to the top are well-known and about as well-groomed as is possible at that altitude. It's already littered with tattered ropes and spent oxygen bottles and, yes, dead bodies. And there is a decent amount of industry built up around the operation. Many people's livelihoods are based on it.
Sending people to other mountains would not increase safety, it would spread the pollution to other places, it would leave the more serious high-altitude mountaineers with fewer mountains to call their own, and it would probably still not be all that effective at diverting the mess away from Everest itself, because everyone knows that Everest's summit is the top.
Keep our faeces/species contained.
If you want to do something impressive, climbing Everest is no longer that thing.
No. That is ridiculous, I have as much right to climb it as anyone else, if it pleases me I'll do it. Like you said, there are lots of mountains so I can choose this particular one like I would any other.
Besides, I was speaking in a moral sense, not a legal sense. What your rights are is not a relevant question. If preserving natural wonders is not a moral prerogative for you, then we're just going to have to disagree on that point.
That said: our morals are clearly different and I will do nothing but mock any attempts of any individual to impose their morals on anyone else.
It's one thing to ask for consideration, it's another to sermonize about how others are delusional while engaging in the same obnoxious behavior yourself.
On a broader topic, the fact that it happens to be geographically located in Nepal does give the country the legal right to dictate who visits it, but let's not delude ourself into thinking that translates into a moral right.
The Everest belongs to all of humanity, it's a physical feature and if you want to make it sound like everyone's responsibility, it ought to be considered everyone's asset too.
If you get into hot water on Everest, you are in a MUCH better scenario than getting into hot water on the 5th tallest mountain.
Why are you so unconcerned about other mountains?
This is a stronger argument as to mountains that are low enough to experience snowmelt.
Considering the population of Earth, the scale of human cities, the permanent settlements and residents along the path, and other such factors: yes, that is precisely what I mean.