Greenpeace Building Replica of Noah's Ark

The Associated Press

Date: 16 May 2007 Time: 10:38 AM ET

Wooden planks are carried by horses to build a replica of Noah's Ark near Mount Ararat in Agri, eastern Turkey. Greenpeace activists are building the boat in an appeal to world leaders to take action against global warming. Manuel Citak/Greenpeace/HO/AP

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Environmental activists are building a replica of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat — where the biblical vessel is said to have landed after the great flood — in an appeal for action on global warming, Greenpeace said Wednesday.

Turkish and German volunteer carpenters are making the wooden ship on the mountain in eastern Turkey, bordering Iran. The ark will be revealed in a ceremony on May 31, a day after Greenpeace activists climb the mountain and call on world leaders to take action to tackle climate change, Greenpeace said.

“Climate change is real, it's happening now and unless world leaders take urgent, decisive and far-reaching action, the next decades will see human misery on a scale not experienced in modern times,” said Greenpeace activist Hilal Atici. “Those leaders have a mandate from the people ... to massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and to do it now.”

Many countries are struggling to address global and national standards for carbon emissions. U.N. delegates are meeting this week in Germany to prepare for December negotiations on a new set of international rules for controlling emissions. The new accord would succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012.

Climate change will also be on the agenda when the Group of Eight major industrialized countries — the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia — meet in Germany in June.