Copenhagen didn’t amount to much. Maybe the next world climate conference will.

COP 16 & CMP 6 – Launch of host country website
Cancún, Mexico — The sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) will be held in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010, together with the thirty-third sessions of the subsidiary bodies and the fourteenth session of the AWG-KP and twelfth session of the AWG-LCA.
The official host country of Mexico’s website is now available online.
Visit the website

COP16 will be in Cancun.  It’s not actually correct to say it’s near Tulum, as the website advertises,  but if you are going to COP16 you should try to visit Tulum even though it’s quite a ways down the coast.  I visited Tulum in 2007.  The Mayans in general are a cautionary tale about what happens when you misuse the land for farming and diverting water, etc.  Cancun itself is frighteningly overdeveloped on the ocean side, with resorts everywhere.  If there are any mangroves left there, they must be hiding them. In fact, much of the coast from Cancun down to Tulum is what I would call overdeveloped, and as everyone knows, that’s not exactly great for the ecosystems and the environment.  Tulum was a Mayan fortress, or a walled city, and mainly occupied around AD 1200.   The walls and location were to ward off invasions that would come from the sea, and obviously they were unsuccessful.  The Spanish eventually abandoned Tulum in the 1600s.

The photo below is one I took of Tulum on the sea edge, with some ruins in the back left area.  This area of Mexico is unbelievably gorgeous and [...]