When a Glacier Goes Extinct, Does Anyone Hear a Sound?

I’m back! I was away in Italy, visiting my oldest son who is studying in Rome. It was a whirlwind trip, and a much-needed vacation.

Now, after eight days strolling through Rome, visiting Pompeii, Florence, and the region of Abruzzo, I’m back at my desk. It’s good to be back.

In April, the same month when Colombia co-hosted the First Conference on Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels, it was reported that the Cerros de la Plaza glacier, found in the El Cocuy National Natural Park in northern Colombia, had gone extinct. This important high-altitude ice mass in the Andean landscape shrunk from 5.5 km² in the 19^th century, to 0.15 km² by 2016, and finally to 0 km² in March 2026, marking the total extinction of this once majestic ice mass.

Its disappearance was not sudden, but rather the result of a prolonged process driven by global warming, reduced snowfall, and long-term climatic changes in the Andean region.1

Extinction. Do we even use that word to talk about something that is ‘non-living’? The Cerros de la Plaza glacier was a critical part of the Earth community, part of a water ecosystem that fed rivers and streams, especially during the dry seasons in Colombia. Not only does its loss impact human communities (what we usually talk about most, or exclusively), but is a threat to the biodiversity of the páramo alpine tundra ecosystems and high mountain environments along that South American ridge.

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The Cerros de la Plaza glacier is not the only one to go extinct in Colombia; it is one of at least 13 that have disappeared, and they have all shrunk significantly due to the climate crisis. Of course, we are seeing the same threats in Canada, with the glaciers in the Western Rockies rapidly melting, and due to be 80% gone in less than 75 years.

I think it is the powerful finality of the word extinction that struck me today, which as I publish this is the International Day for Biological Diversity.

The Cerros de la Plaza glacier went extinct. This huge mass of ice and snow that developed over millions of years of evolution, gone in the span of less than 200 years, thanks to human activity. Gone. At some point while we were sleeping, you and I and those living at the base of the Andean mountains, it disappeared.

Why doesn’t the world stop when something in it dies? Why doesn’t the world stop when one part of it, created in infinite wisdom by the powers that brought forth the entire Earth community, and you and me, is gone forever?

This question that so many of us ask when we lose a loved one is the question I am asking now. It’s obviously rhetorical, but I’m asking it now, one more time, as my lament and confession.

While I was sleeping, a glacier went extinct. When a glacier goes extinct, does anyone hear a sound?

Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more. (Jeremiah 31:15 NRSV)

(My thanks to The Collapse Chronicle for its hard work every day providing important news like this one.)

1

“Colombia Loses the Cerros de la Plaza Glacier in El Cocuy National Park,” Colombia 1, April 13, 2026. https://colombiaone.com/2026/04/13/colombia-lose-glacier-el-cocuy/.

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