Document published in "Cronica de los Tiempos" magazine in April  of 2002

We are here in the year 2070, I've just had my 50th birthday,  but my appearance is that of someone who is 85. I have serious renal  problems because I drink very little water,  I don't have too long to live, now a days I am one of the oldest people in this society. I remember when I was five years old, everything was very different, there were many trees in the parks,  the houses had pretty gardens, and I could enjoy a bath staying under the shower for up to an hour, but now we use towels dampened in mineral oil to clean our skin. Before, all the girls would show their pretty hair, now, we have to shave our heads to maintain it clean without using water.

Before, my dad used to wash the car with water coming out of a hose, today, children can't believe water was utilized that way. I remember there being many signs saying "don't waste water" but no one ever payed much attention; they thought that the water would never go away. Now, the rivers, lagoons, and aquifers are irreversibly contaminated or drained. Immense deserts are the landscapes that now surround us. Gastrointestinal infections, skin diseases and urinary tract, are the main causes of death.

The industry is paralyzed  and the unemployment is dramatic. Desalination plants are the major source of employment and they pay us with portable water instead of a salary. Assaults for a container of water are common in these deserted streets; the food is 80% synthetic. The amount of water that was ideal for the average adult person used to be eight full glasses of water, today I can only drink half a cup of water. Our clothing is disposable, which increases the amount of waste; we had to go back to blind wells (septic tanks) in the past century because the sewage system couldn't be used due to the lack of water.

The population's appearance is horrible: faint bodies, creased by dehydration, their skin full of  small splits due to the ultraviolet rays that don't have the ozone layer that filtered them through the atmosphere. Due to the dryness of the skin, a young girl of 20 years looks as if she were 40. Scientists have done research, but there is no possible solution. Water cannot be manufactured,  and oxygen has now become degraded due to the lack of trees which has lowered the IQ of the younger generations. The morphology of many individual's spermatozoa was altered. To consequence there are many children with deficiencies, mutations and deformities. 

The government even charge us for the air we breathe. 137 m3 per day, per habitant and adult. The people who are incapable of  paying are removed from the "ventilated areas" that are equipped with gigantic mechanical lungs that run on solar energy. They are not of good quality, but we can breathe. The average age is 35. In some countries there are still patches of vegetation with their respective river; which is heavily guarded by the army. Water has become a coveted treasure, more than gold or diamonds.

  Here instead, there are no trees because it hardly ever rains, and when the sky happens to register some kind of precipitation,  its of acid rain. The seasons have been greatly affected by the atomic tests and the polluting industries of the twentieth century. They warned that we should protect our environment, but no one listened. 

Every now and then, my daughter asks me to tell her about the time when I was a young. I describe how beautiful the forests used to be, I tell her about the rain, about the flowers, of how nice it was to take a bath and fish in the rivers and dams, and drinking as much water as I pleased, and how healthy people were.

*She asks me, "Dad, why did the water go way?"

And I begin to feel a knot build in my throat. I can't stop feeling guilty because I belong to the generation that finally destroyed the environment or just simply ignored so many signs. And now our children are playing the price. Sincerely, I believe that life on Earth will not be possible in a short period of time because the destruction of the environment has reached a point were it is irreversible. How I wish I could go back in time and make humanity understand this... when we still had a chance to save our planet Earth.

[ this article has been translated from Spanish to English and I've tried to do the best I could to make it as accurate :)]