How a natural disaster that happened 90 years ago prophesied our climate-ravaged future

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Imagine that you're a farmer during the Great Depression. Since the stock market crashed in 1929, you have struggled to make ends meet for yourself and your family. If you lived in certain regions of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas or other Plains states, you would stare in horror as giant clouds of dust overtook your land. Your hard work, your future plans, your very life itself — all being overwhelmed by, and buried in, piles of dust.

This horrific scenario was quite commonplace during the United States during the 1930s, and is referred to today as the dust bowl. After the Homestead Act of 1862 made it possible for white Americans to buy western land at extremely low prices, aspiring farmers began snapping up the newly-acquired western territories for cattle grazing and planting vast fields. Unfortunately, they did not apply dryland farming techniques, or agricultural methods that protect the soil from wind erosion when farmers must do their job without irrigation. As a result, the native and deep-rooted grasses that had kept the dirt in place for centuries was suddenly gone. Once a severe drought hit the region, the conditions were perfect for a series of severe dust storms — which happened over and over again in the battered American midwest during the 1930s.

If you want a glimpse of what humanity's future will be like as climate change worsens, the dust bowl is a good place to start. Indeed, much like climate change, the dust bowl began because technological advances overtook our collective ability to apply that knowledge responsibly.

"There are two major points to consider when thinking about changes in the agricultural economy," explained Dr. Douglas Sheflin from Colorado State University, who has studied Colorado during the dust bowl and wrote a book called "Legacies of Dust: Land Use and Labor on the Colorado Plains." "First, market demand for wheat during World War I led to dramatic expansion of production throughout the Great Plains, which is often referred to as the 'Great Plow Up.' People came to the region en masse to capitalize on the high prices and seemingly inexhaustible demand and proceeded to plant wheat on most every available acre across the space."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/how-a-natural-disaster-that-happened-90-years-ago-prophesied-our-climate-ravaged-future/ar-AAYBXJJ

[Martin68]

1. Good point. There will be similar catastrophes as the climate heats up further. We are looking at a

number of different catastrophes that will inevitably affect the Western water supply in ways that will rival the impact of the Dust Bowl. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

[hunter]

2. My wife and I have some family histories about that, and these stories are not pretty.

"Okie" was not a term of endearment, especially in California.

My grandma and her sister were born in San Francisco, one before the Great Earthquake, one after, and had family throughout the state. They didn't much appreciate the family dairy business, they didn't like cows or dairy men, so they ran wild as teens and young adults in Hollywood where they became prototypical "Hollywood Liberals."

One of the problems they had with many Dust Bowl refugees was the overt racism these refugees brought with them. Many of these refugees were bitter and resentful of California employers who didn't immediately fire their Mexican, Asian, and Black workers to hire "real" as in "white" down-on-their-luck U.S. Americans.

These resentments still linger 90 years later in Republican California. My grandma and her sister definitely had a lot of unexamined racist beliefs and attitudes but business was business. They weren't going to lay off experienced crew and replace them with inexperienced people, some of whom they considered "white trash." (Yeah, a few of the older people in my family used that term. I was shocked when I first heard that as a kid.)

Some California employers did lay off employees who were not white, replacing them with desperate white people who would work for practically nothing and tolerate many abuses. My wife's Mexican-American dad's family got split up this way. Her dad's immediate family had reliable work during the Great Depression and lived in long established Mexican-American communities. Some of his relatives did not, including an aunt and uncle who moved to Mexico where they felt more secure against the rising tide of racism and xenophobia.

My wife's dad's family is interesting. A lot of her ancestors were indigenous people who lived in the U.S. Southwest long before there was a Mexico or a U.S.A.. My wife's grandma's family had been forced south across the new U.S.A. / Mexico border by the U.S. Army in the later 1800's. They returned to the U.S.A. in the 1920's as "immigrant" farm workers. My wife's grandma insisted that her children were born in the U.S.A. but she never sought U.S. citizenship for herself such was her anger.

I'm afraid nothing has changed in the U.S.A. since the Dust Bowl. Racist "red state" U.S. Americans displaced by climate change will not be welcome in many of the places they seek refuge. You even see it here on DU, when people paint "Southerners" or "Texans" with a very broad brush.

What will we do when a hungry "Florida Man," displaced by storms and rising sea levels, comes knocking at our door seeking employment?