Al Gore invokes the Mayans

Al's Journal : Looking Back to Look Forward

A new study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters:

"'These models suggest that as ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical system,' writes environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History in the current Human Ecology journal."

As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously.

The Mayans didn't have SUVs. Why were they forced to deal with global climatic shifts?

Maya Human Sacrifice ... Say it isn't so, Archaeology on Ambergris Caye, Belize

The famous Sacred Cenote (a natural well) located at Chichen-Itza was found to contain numerous skeletons of men, women and children who were sacrificial victims. Bishop de Landa, in the sixteenth century reported: "Into this well they have the custom of throwing Men alive as a sacrifice to the gods in times of drought, and they believed they did not die though they never saw them."

Did this work? Will unplugging our iPod chargers (or bankrupting coal companies) work any better?