Recently, I asked some friends what they remember about the Dust Bowl or the Texas drought of the 1950s. “Not much,” they say.
Most Americans don’t learn history.
I’ve been doing my homework.
If you want a picture of our climate future, look at the past. Americans managed to ruin the great plains in less than a decade. By the 1930s, you couldn’t grow anything there. Over-farming turned the region into a desert even before the droughts and heat waves started. Giant dust storms became the norm. People called them “black blizzards.” They were so bad, you couldn’t even see.
Kids started dying from dust poison.
Nearly 3 million people left.
It was a mass migration.
A lot of us don’t know what to say to our friends and family when it comes to climate change. We see the numbers. We hear the predictions, but most Americans still can’t imagine their personal future.
Maybe this will help.
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