It is true that there are natural cycles in climate, and always have been, but it is also true that human activity has become the dominant and most important agent of change in climate.

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How can we know how much of the current global warming trend is affected by humans? I have no idea, a lot of studies have been done but what is most relevant for me, is that the planet is getting warmer and warmer every year, this is a fact we cannot turn our backs on like previous generations have done by giving more importance to economic growth.

Tree months ago, I wrote about how frustrated I was with people regarding environmental responsibility: Environmentalist Frustration… should I quit?

A lot of people think that problems have to be resolved by others, by the government, by the Mayor of your city, by authorities, but only few think of what they can do themselves to make a difference, from those a lot only focus on what is happening inside their homes, only a few care about their neighborhood, and much less about their community.

It turns out that where I live, we have been experiencing a serious crisis of water. No rain since December have caused our local water resource to dry out. Now many more people are concerned and started to ask themselves questions, such as: what can they do to avoid crisis like that.

We have been having some rain but not enough. The government, after 2 months finally decided to bring to our community 3 generators to help bring water into the lines from other resource points in our island. Unfortunately, these generations work with fossil fuels.

They also bought a lot of plastic water bottles to give to the most in need economically speaking, unfortunately, we have now more plastic bottles in this island than before. I understand that drastic situations call for drastic measures, but are we doing the right thing for our future? Or are we just putting out this fire?

One of the things that keeps my mind busy lately, or should I say worried, is that soon I am going to be a father, I am so looking forward to teaching my son everything I know but I am also concerned for his future. What are we going to leave to our kids and grandsons as a planet? We complain about what others have done in the past, but the majority barely see the damage we continue to do today.

My goal for this post it’s to help open the eyes of those that still don’t know what is happening. I hope to influence somehow in your personal life so you can also make some changes in your habits. Believe it or not, any change, regardless of how small it is, makes an important positive impact.

Let’s help each other to stop being the parasites of our home, Planet Earth.

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Global Warming and Green house gases

There is a lot of information available from which we can learn a lot about these concepts.

An important thing to understand and acknowledge is that according to scientists the "greenhouse effect" caused by human activity is causing the warming we are experiencing, this warming happens because our atmosphere keeps the heat radiated from our planet toward space.

Certain gases in the atmosphere block heat from escaping. Long-lived gases that remain semi-permanently in the atmosphere and do not respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are described as "forcing" climate change.

These are some of the gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect:

• Water vapor.
• Carbon dioxide (CO2).
• Methane.
• Nitrous oxide.
• Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

I found an interesting article that helps explain the nature of these greenhouse gases: A blanket around the Earth

What impacted me the most is that we have increased CO2 concentration thanks to all the burning fossil fuels and uncontrolled deforestation.

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A lot of changes have happened, some of the recent ones that have impacted me are:

Polar Bear Invasion:

Novaya Zemlya archipelago, located in the Arctic recently declared emergency due to a massive polar bear invasion. People were very scared, luckily, the polar bear is an endangered species and people in Russia take this seriously so no hunting is allowed. The reason of this invasion was because the bears were hungry and they moved towards the humans, obviously looking for food.

Everywhere I search, I read that the sea ice is shrinking and the bears need it to hunt their food, mostly seals. Is the climate change pushing the bears to search for their food on land? Of course! And this phenomena just started.

I wonder, what other animal behavior are we going to experience soon thanks to this climate change?

Heat waves record highs:

If you do a small research over the internet, you will notice that every year we find new record-breaking temperatures in some areas of the world, as well as longer dry seasons.

In Australia for example, this past January, it was declared a new record high of temperatures that have killed animals and spoiled farmed fruits. Are you ready to experience several days with a 48.5 degrees Celsius (119 F)? I am not.

As the time passes, if humans of planet Earth don’t do anything about it, the following years will be worse and the ones that will start dying will be the weak humans such as kids and seniors.

Last month in Argentina, there was also new temperatures records registered in the Patagonia area, where heat was so unusual that tourists and locals were able to go into the sea and swim like if they were in the Caribbean where I live.

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Greenland and Antarctica are melting:

The speed at which the ice sheets are melting is increasingly fast. In Greenland, the melting season is getting longer every year.

Antarctic ice sheet study found that the rate of antarctic ice melt has tripled over the last 5 years with more than 200 billion tons of ice flooding into oceans annually and will contribute to at least 6 inches of sea-level rise by 2100. Tree trillion tons of ice have already disappeared from Antarctica since 1992.

It’s a fact that islands in the Pacific Ocean are starting to disappear, in Asia like the Maldives islands or in Oceania like the country of Tuvalu, considered at high risk of vanishing.

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Here is an interesting article that could give you a better idea about countries at risk: 10 Countries That Could Disappear With Global Warming

But I don’t have to look that far to have proof of this, here in Panama, in the Caribbean area of San Blas islands, indigenous people have started already to migrate to mainland few years ago, because the rise of sea level is covering the islands where they live.

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Something interesting I learn, is that besides the rise of sea level problems in some parts of the hemisphere, the weather patterns will continue to be affected. Ice is fresh water, ocean has salt water, so when it melts it causes change in the patterns of ocean circulation. Ocean circulates the Earth’s heat from the poles to the equator and back, so we will see an important disruption in the patterns, besides impacting in the ocean life such as corals that are already being affected and dying from this.

Altered ocean currents: leads to changes in connectivity and temperature regimes that contribute to lack of food for corals and hampers dispersal of coral larvae.

Animals extinction due to deforestation:

That beautiful animal you see in the picture, we won't be able to see it anymore in the wild in human history. It’s the Guacamayo Azul, whose habitat used to be in the rain forests of Paraguay, Bolivia and mostly in Brasil. It is sad to realize that we, the humans, are not only killing the lungs of our planet (forests), but also destroying the habitat of our animals whom many of them cannot longer continue their existence.

Just like the Guacamayo Azul, there are many other species disappearing little by little due to the uncontrolled deforestation, which main causes are the transformation of forests into land for cultivation and cattle raising.

In the Amazon for example, one of the most important and largest rain-forests of our planet it’s already suffering, and it’s our fault.

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These are pictures of Rondonia region of Brazil, originally had over 200,000 km2 of rain-forest but has become one of the most deforested places in the Amazon.

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There are many more events going on, especially the natural disasters, which will continue to increase and are already doing too much damage around the globe.

This is a list of some interesting videos, news and interviews that will give you more examples of these changes:

• Unexplained Events Happening Worldwide! (FEBRUARY 2019)

• Greenland is melting

• Runaway climate change could trigger 'Hothouse Earth' with 200ft sea level rises, warn scientists

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It is very sad to see how some people, few politicians and their followers, still believe that the waste of our civilization is not changing the climate of our planet.

The three important facts these people should stop ignoring:

• Ice is melting.
• The Earth is warming.
• Sea level is rising.

What am I doing to make a positive impact?

Social Responsibility:

I will continue to dedicate time to our social group Cero Basura en Bocas We are currently working on a very good idea of eliminating from local market the plastic bottles smaller than 1.5 liters, as well as convincing commerce to install rainwater collection systems and stop selling water to people. It’s not an easy task, I know, but it’s also not impossible.

Changing my habits of consumption:

• At home we stop buying detergents and disinfectants, we only use vinegar and baking soda to clean the house and wash our clothes.

• At home we brush our teeth with coconut oil and baking soda, no need to buy expensive toothpaste with fluor anymore which tubes ended up as waste as is hard to recycle those here. Same goes for making our own deodorant.

• We are reusing the water when we shower for toilet flush. But an important and easy solution would be to change the way we build homes.

• We are trying to reuse everything we can, as well as learning everyday about recycling. Checkout this easy example you can also apply at home in one of the @evecab videos: Ditch the plastic sponge for a DIY reusable one!

• We don’t buy as many clothes anymore as we used to before. For instance, I stop purchasing leather products a long time ago. I stopped buying for things that I really don’t need.

• It’s true, we still use a diesel car, but we are considering the purchase of an electric golf car which footprint it’s smaller. For this we need to save money. We could also just get rid off that car and just bike, but with our coming newborn, it becomes a dilemma for us.

• We have changed our diet drastically.

Talking about changing our diet:

By buying products that not necessarily are healthy for our lives we are also supporting indirectly the corporations that demand ingredients that come from trees that in order to plant them massively, they have to destroy ecosystems through deforestation and/or burning.

By burning extensive landfills we are contributing to the unnecessary production of more Carbon Dioxide (CO2), and this has been going on for decades.

For instance in some parts of the world like in Indonesia, the palm oil plantations are having a serious impact in our environment. Like I just wrote, in order to grow more of these trees, people have to destroy first the ecosystems, the massive burning brings even more CO2 to the atmosphere. This will continue as long as big companies keep demanding palm oil, and these will continue as well as long as we, the consumers, keep buying these products.

Palm oil is used in cosmetic products, cooking oils, detergents, and processed foods.

So, as soon as I learned about this, I started reading the ingredients description of everything. Sadly, I had to stop buying the only snack that I permitted myself to eat, at least once a week: Jalapeno Snyders snack.

This snapshot picture was taken from their own website: Snyders of Hanover

Then I started to ask myself, do we really need to eat these things?

There is an impressive list of companies that uses palm oil for their products. I encourage you to think twice about what you purchase once at the supermarket and do the exercise of reading the ingredient description.

I also found out that there is a Sustainable Palm Oil production and companies can get certified. Certified sustainable palm oil

But more research needs to be done from my side to be completely sure of how legit this is.

I stopped eating meat few years ago, out of compassion for animals, so I became vegetarian. But the more I learn about the impact on the environment of the meat industry, the more I am glad of my decision.

I just learned that one of the reasons for deforestation is to use the deforested land for food production such as beef, mostly from cows and cows produce a lot of Methane CH4

Methane is gas that is found in small quantities in Earth's atmosphere. Methane is the simplest hydrocarbon, consisting of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane is flammable, and is used as a fuel worldwide.

The sad part of this is that most of the people will eat meat just to give a good taste to their mouth and the ones that use excuses will tell you because they need the protein. This is how brainwashed we are.

And don't take me wrong, of course if we don’t have anything to eat, it’s a different story, but nowadays we have so many environmental friendly options and plenty of plant protein sources.

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The IPCC report.

The IPCC it’s an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, it’s basically an intergovernmental panel on climate change and internationally accepted authority on climate change. The IPCC reports have the agreement of leading climate scientist and all the participants governments.

Basically, what the IPCC says is that we have until 2030 to change drastically the future of our planet, which is very scary. Humans have to avoid temperatures to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid catastrophic events.

A misconception people have, it’s that 1.5 degrees does not make any difference, but they are wrong. Talking about Greenland and the Antarctic melt already happening fast and impacting in the world, I really don’t want to imagine how much more melt we will have with a 1.5 degrees increase in temperature. Many islands of the world will disappear as well as coasts, we will have more change in animal behavior along with massive human migrations. Many think immigrants are a problem now, but later on these people will see what a migration problem really is when all these people will have to relocate.

Here is a link to the 2018 report if you want to read part of all of it, it’s quite long: IPCC report

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Are we capable of distancing ourselves completely from fossil fuels in less than 3 decades?

It is very hard, besides educating people we really need all the politicians of the world on board! It takes everyone to make a positive impact.

Have you asked yourself already what are you doing to make a positive impact? Please let me know in the comments below, maybe you are doing something I am not that I can apply.

Small tips for you and your family:

• Use your bike or take public transport instead of using your own car.
• Plant trees as much as you can.
• Recycle and try to reuse everything.
• Be more conscious in the way you consume, before buying something, ask yourself more than once if you actually need that new good or item.
• Support and give your vote to politicians that are more environmentally responsible believers. How sad could it be for a nation to have a president that doesn’t believe in global warming.

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It breaks my heart to think I will have to explain to my son why us humans have been the parasites of Planet Earth, as well as explaining to him how unfair life is, turns out that the nations that are and will suffer the most are the ones that have the least impact on global warming.

Thank you so much for reading this, and I hope this post made you to think more deeply about it.

I highly recommend you to watch the Documentary with Leonardo DiCaprio: Before the Flood.

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Thank You!

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Picture Sources:

• Amason
• San Blas Islands
• Oceania Map
• Kuna Picture
• Planet
• Polar Bears
• Greenhouse gases

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Info Sources:

• Polar Bears Invasion
• Polar Bears Invasion 2
• Heat Wave Australia
• Heat Wave Argentina
• Interview to Professor Andrew Shepherd
• Corals affected
• A blanket around the Earth