During a trip to the Glacier National Park in Montana, I came face to face with a giant mountain of ice. I put my hands on them and they were bathed in cold water  A park ranger who was in the vicinity told me that there had not been enough snow and that the summer had been too hot. He told me about bears that had been awakened prematurely by heat and hunger. writes Rodrigo Noriega in La Prensa. 

It is reproduced here as a wake- up call to all who care about the survival of the planet and do not want to join the rush of skeptics heading like lemmings to oblivion.

This is worth sharing with your family and friends … before it’s too late [editor]

My informant reminded me of the problem of the bees that left early to look for flowers that had not been opened, without those flowers the bees died, and without the bees, the flowers would have many problems in reproducing. I stayed alone for a while with the glacier, the jets of cold water fell on my clothes with such constancy, that I could not conclude anything else that the glacier was crying, because I was dying. 

I remembered that anecdote from more than a decade ago when I learned about the jaguar murdered in  Darien by a pack of dogs, whose owner filmed death with his cell phone. According to the Jaguara Foundation, since 1989, at least 347 jaguars have been exterminated by Panamanians. We are condemning that species to disappear from our land. The forest without jaguars will be filled with rodents, and other small mammals, birds and other animals whose overpopulation will become a problem for us. Think of the fear caused by the hantavirus-infected by wild rodents. How many more pests are controlled by jaguars? 

The screens of televisions, computers and cell phones show virally the videos of the Siberian dogs that pull a sled in the water because the ice sheet has melted in Greenland. This week the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) confessed what was feared: the 6 months, between December 2018 and May 2019, were the driest in 106 years of climate records carried by the Panama Canal. Although it seems a coincidence, Global Forest Watch reports that Panama has lost more than 352 thousand hectares of forests from 2000 until 2018, the vast majority was lost from 2012 to date. 

In a few weeks, the plastic bag will be history in supermarkets and other retail stores. However, that great start is just one step in the right direction. Trash floods us, especially plastic: boxes, containers, linings, and in particular bottles. We have a wasteful culture, in which single-use plastics abound, however, the whole scheme is topped up on the final consumer. Thus, thousands of tons of waste are produced every day. Perhaps, if the garbage was owned by the person who brought it to the market, and not from who has to consume it, the reality would change. These are the rules that in other countries force companies to receive back the plastic waste and other waste that has been generated in the process of selling a product to consumers. Meanwhile, plastic condemns us that in the year 2050, or maybe before, there is more plastic in the oceans than fish. This without taking into account that many of the seafood we consume already has plastic in their stomachs and intestines, like the turtles and shorebirds of many of the islands and coasts of the world. 

We have produced so much junk, garbage and environmental pollution that we are threatening the genetic integrity of our species. A single affectation: the endocrine disruptors constitute a risk for our well-being and the genetics of our descendants.  

According to the website www.sanitas.es, endocrine disruptors come from: "food, pesticides, personal hygiene, and cleaning products, construction materials, plastic materials, air fresheners, decoration materials, insecticides, clothing, toys, household appliances, electronic devices. The list is very long, as is the list of chemicals that can alter the endocrine system. "

All these are products that we use and consume constantly. We have turned the whole productive system into a poison factory, and we are drinking, eating, breathing and applying it to our skin, our hair, and our whole body. That is called suicide.

The Gunas are among the few original peoples who had a concept to name our continent: Abya Yala. To the other mortals, cultural use has imposed the name of America. The truth is that Abya Yala is sinking as a cause of climate change.

The gunas have already begun the move to the mainland, leaving behind hundreds of years of traditions and experiences on their islands. The Gunas are the first environmental refugees of our country. In the coming decades, the residents of Garrote and Portobelo in Colón, the entire Bocatoreña coast, Puerto Armuelles, Alanje, Puerto Mutis, Parita, Mensabé, Aguadulce, Puerto Caimito, Boca la Caja, Panama Viejo, Juan Díaz and a long rosary of communities that will follow the fate of the islands of Guna Yala.

A master of those islands told me that his biggest loss was his cemetery, where the remains of the grandparents of his grandparents rested. I thought of my own ancestors buried in the Garden of Peace, a neighboring valley of a mangrove area and the entire Panama Viejo estuary. In some decades with climate change, that area could become a memory.

The map of the city of Panama in 2060 will be different from that of 2020. It is likely that the map of the entire planet will change radically.

Jorge Luis Borges, in one of his most famous micro-stories, said that once a map of the universe was made and an image of the face of God was obtained. If you draw new maps of the environmental reality of the world, you will be drawing the face of our planet crying: its main inhabitants have been determined to destroy it.