The Dust Bowl & The Gulf Disaster..what we can learn from the former

[SoCalDem]

For years , Agriculture agents from the "government" fanned out across the plains & tried to educate farmers who were literally wearing out their soil, and the farmers ignored their warning.. They did not want some "elitist government know-it-all in a suit" coming along & telling THEM how to farm.,. they knew what they were doing.. it was what they had always done.

and now we have the same mentality of many people who are up in arms about how the government would dare to tell THEM how to handle their commerce and to shut down the deepwater drilling that has led to the destruction of their own environment.

This time it's actually worse because those dust-bowl farmers really did not know better, and many probably had no better than a 3rd or 4th grade education, and there was no 24-7 news available to them.

The dust bowl farmers, having nothing much more to lose, headed west to find better places to farm or to hire out on other people's farms , but if gulf fishing is all you know or if your beaches are your wealth, where do you go to get more of that?

And just because this is the first BIG oil disaster in the gulf, does not mean it will be the last. The dust bowl states rebounded, but only after 1941 brought torrential rains that had been absent for 11 years, and once the farmers had left, that fallow land recovered & became the breadbasket of the nation...but farmers are more careful now & know what can happen.