Floods, Drought, & a Population on the Brink

It’s interesting to think of the comparisons between the Dust Bowl and today’s economy..

(Originally posted on Imagine 2050)

Floods, Drought, & a Population on the

Brink

September 23, 2008  by Jill

Several years ago my Dad said something rather prophetic during a family conversation about living in California. A few of us were expressing our reservations about ever moving to a state that was a couple dozen earthquakes away from falling into the ocean. He said “Californians are going to sink themselves long before earthquakes do.” He was referring to the housing market there, where lenders were handing out mortgages like candy. Of course many who followed the financial markets knew what was coming, the writing, as they say, was on the wall. But ordinary Americans were blissfully unaware and lenders liked it that way. The bubble unfortunately hasn’t burst in one catastrophic moment, it seems to be bursting in slow motion, the devastation mounting with each passing month.

As misfortunes pile into one another like the driving rains Hurricane Ike pushed across the country, I can’t help thinking about drought. Not just any drought but that man-made disaster called the Dust Bowl. There’s a sadly ironic parallel between Steinbeck’s depiction of cracked Oklahoma cornfields and the Midwest crops bloated by rain this summer.

75 years ago the Dust Bowl was a combination of drought, an agricultural market that forced farmers to overuse the land, and the Great Depression. Today it’s hurricanes, a housing market forcing people out of their homes, and an economic downward spiral that is seemingly out of control. Then the people fled for California in search of better opportunities, today they are fleeing the country’s southern coasts in search of higher ground.

*click here to read the entire article