South America

The Amazon jungle is metaphorically referred to as the lungs of the world: CO2 in, O2 out, transformed through a dense emerald mass. It's an irreplaceable treasure, in many spots still unmapped, and a biological preserve filled with species that we likely haven’t even seen.

So it’s quite welcome that author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is paying attention to what happens to the Amazon.

What’s not welcome are the misdirections Friedman takes while discussing how to protect the remaining 80 percent of the Amazon that has not yet been clear-cut and transformed into cattle ranches and soy plantations.

Looking at pictures of the Andean ridges, running like exposed spinal columns down the Western flank of Latin America, one is struck immediately by their white tips.

Soon, pictures are going to be the only way to see that whiteness.

Peruvian glaciers have long been known to be melting; Bolivia’s Chacaltaya glacier is fast disappearing; and now experts say Colombia is on pace to lose all of its Andean glaciers in the next 25 years if current trends continue.

“There's been a sharp downward trend in snow coverage of several of Colombia's big glaciers particularly since 1985. If current rates continue, Colombia won't have any glaciers left by 2035,” Ricardo Lozano, head of the Colombian Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, told a conference last month.

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