“This summer is worse than last; forest fires have already
broken last year’s records. The rains haven’t come, and
temperature records are falling like leaves from a dried-up
tree. Springs, wells and irrigation ditches are bone dry. Farms
are withering. We’ve all heard the gloomy scenarios of global
warming: extreme weather, drought, famine, breakdown of society,
destruction of civilization. My current perch in Placitas, New
Mexico feels like a front-row seat to the apocalypse. Intuitive
as the connection may seem, we don’t know if the current drought
is a consequence of global warming, deBuys writes. Periodic,
decades-long droughts have been relatively common in the last
few thousand years, according to analysis of dried lake beds.
Most of the area’s famously collapsed civilizations–Chaco
Canyon, Mesa Verde, the Galisteo pueblos–are thought to have
died out for lack of water in these extended dry periods, which
deBuys calls “megadroughts.” By contrast, the last century’s
human population growth in the Americ