My students want to know why "they" didn't stop the practices that led up to the Dust Bowl that lasted from 1930-1936.
"How many years in the making was the catastrophe?" I ask them.
The first guess is ten-fifteen years.
When I suggest it was at least a hundred, they grow quiet as they try to calculate and imagine the truth of what I'm saying.
For a thousand years, prairie grasses, sometimes with six feet of roots, held the top soil in. Over time, the roaming buffalo were replaced by the small farmer who began with a mud packed dwelling and small crops. Slowly the grass fields became fields of wheat and corn. When demand grew, more prairies were overturned and planted. When hard times came, the field that should have been left fallow was planted anyway. When the crop failed, the family went to the bank. When it failed again, the bank owned the land. The weather shifted. Rain ceased and the winds roared. Estimates are that 350 tons of topsoil was carried to the east coast.
"Let's look at a modern day example. You've all heard that we live in the midst of a pending water crisis."
They are well aware. One student explains that they've already taken up the grass on the side of the yard and replaced it with rocks.
I then ask, "How long did it take to get here?" We talk about lawns and golf courses in the desert, and alfalfa farming practices that require so much water. There are old water laws that mandate "Use it or lose it," causing farmers to use their irrigation shares even during a hard rain. We tolerate, even plant, the invasive Russian olive tree that sucks in 75 gallons of water to live.
"We all know about climate change and the carbon imprint."
They start to blame China and India. But how many of us walk when we can drive?
We tend to be best at change when the threat is imminent.
The rains started again in 1939, and once again the land was valuable and viable, but farming practices had to change.
Perhaps the greatest surprise to my students is when I suggest that their habits now are already the thirty-year-old they will become.
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