{"id":6331,"date":"2015-04-30T17:12:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T23:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6331"},"modified":"2015-04-30T17:14:34","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T23:14:34","slug":"will-it-be-so-long-california-been-good-to-know-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6331","title":{"rendered":"Will it Be \u2018So Long California, Been Good to Know You\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Column: Economics<\/a><\/div>\n
Region: USA in the World<\/a><\/div>\n
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We occasionally hear stories of the Great Dustbowl in America\u2019s grain-rich Midwest during the Great Depression of the 1930\u2019s when prolonged drought became so extreme as strong winds, drought and clouds of dust plagued nearly 75 percent of the United States. The Dust Bowl lasted for eight years from 1931 to 1939. Yet we hear little, especially in US national media of a new dust bowl which threatens to literally dry up the nation\u2019s most populous state, California.<\/p>\n

The origins of the 1930\u2019s Dust Bowl went back to the introduction of large-scale mechanized agriculture across the Midwest prairie lands. In the early 1920\u2019s the Federal Reserve interest rate policies triggered a deep recession and to survive, farmers turned to mechanization and the new Ford tractors and other equipment. Between 1925 and 1930 more than 5 million acres of previously unfarmed land were plowed. US farmers as a result produced record crops during the 1931 season just in time to coincide with the collapse of living standards of the Great Depression. The result was severe overproduction of wheat that led to severely reduced market prices. The wheat market was flooded, and people were too poor to buy. In a desperate bid, farmers went into debt those who were able and expanded their fields in an effort to turn a profit, much as is taking place across the shale oilfields of North Dakota and Texas today for oil. The result was that they covered the prairie with wheat in place of the natural drought-resistant grasses and left unused fields bare<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Picture of a black blizzard of soil during the Midwest Dust Bowl in the 1930s<\/p>\n

The new plow-based farming in the Midwest region caused loss of fertile topsoil that literally blew away in the winds, leaving the land vulnerable to drought. Then the rains stopped. By 1932, 14 dust storms, known as black blizzards were reported, and in just one year, the number increased to nearly 40, forcing millions of people to flee the region. It wasn\u2019t until 1939 when the rain returned that relief came<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One year of water left<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now we return to California, America\u2019s most populous state. It has 38 million people, larger than most countries of the EU, and with a GDP in 2013 of $2.2 trillion which, were California a nation, would give her the eighth largest GDP in the world behind only the USA, China, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. In short, California matters not only to the future of the USA economy but of the world economy. It is home of some of the planet\u2019s most concentrated centers of high technology from the Silicon Valley to the great scientific labs and universities such as Berkeley and California Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

For four consecutive years the state has been in a severe drought. Each day that passes it depletes the ground water resources, reservoir lakes and other sources more.<\/p>\n

Jay Famiglietti, Senior Water Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology and a professor of Earth System Science at UC Irvine has sounded the gravity of the situation for the first time in an OpEd in the Los Angeles Times.<\/p>\n

According to Famiglietti, this past winter, California\u2019s usual \u2018wet season\u2019, \u201cpaltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We\u2019re not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we\u2019re losing the creek too<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Famiglietti is regarded by peers as one of the best water scientists in the United States, if not the world. His warning is not the usual climate scare propaganda of an Al Gore. It is based on measurable scientific facts. He cites some:<\/p>\n