Has anyone else watched Ken Burns "Dust Bowl on PBS?

[luv_mykatz]

53. Silly me, I should have re-read all of the posts before posting my last reply.

Thank you, Curmudgeoness. You are the person who posted the link which allowed me to watch the documentary online.

And, you are the person who started the thread. I saw information which told me that the Dust Bowl doc would be broadcast on PBS, but I don't have a t.v., so I did not think I would get to watch it. Thanks to you, I did get to watch it.

Very powerful stuff. There was a segment on the irrigation in which someone commented that the same mistakes were being made, in the same place all over again. They were referring to people not respecting that the Plains is dry land, and NOT meant for farming. "Wrong side up" is what the cattle herders said, when the sod was plowed up, removing the deep-rooted buffalo grass, and replacing that sod with wheat.

Basically, the immigrants tried to impose a form of agriculture on the Plains which wasn't suited to the amount of available rainfall, bouts of severe weather, and drought which the Plains are subject to. The kind of agriculture they tried to impose is better suited to Western Europe, which has much more rainfall than the Plains.

The Plains environment was North America's savannah, with huge roaming herds of antelope, deer, and buffalo. Most of the stuff I've read said that the Plains was able to be stable environmentally precisely because none of it was fenced, and both the animal herds and the people who lived there moved around, instead of staying in one place.

What is scary, is that tapping the water in the Oglalla aquifer made it possible to impose a kind of farming which is not suited to the Plains' environmental realities for the long term. What will happen to all those folks when they run out of water?

One of the points made by the documentary was that the Dust Bowl could happen again. Maybe not as bad, because of the improvements of farming techniques, but still, when the water in the aquifer is gone, what then? That is fossil water and can't be replaced within our lifetimes, or for many lifetimes.
I am tempted to paraphrase Aldo Leopold, who pointed out that is does no good to make improvements in the pump when the problem is that the well (read: resources) is going dry.

Still, I am extremely glad that Ken Burns made this documentary, and I hope as many people as possible see it, and talk it up with their friends. We need to have lots of thoughtful discussion about climate change, and the possible social problems and dislocations it could cause.

I also kept wondering what the local Native Tribes would have said, if they could've been interviewed for the doc? Perhaps 're-wilding' the Plains is not such a far fetched idea after all. But it would have to be done in a way that would truly support the folks who live there now.