Environmental catastrophe and natural disasters have occurred throughout the history of the United States and, although reluctantly, it has always risen to the occasion to mitigate or stop them from largely effecting its population. We are now facing a problem unlike any other in our history, or in any civilization’s history for that matter. The threat of global warming through increased CO2 emissions is no longer something up for debate. The science is clear, the evidence overwhelming. The United States, itself, has concluded this in its annual report on climate change in May of 2014. The oceans will rise, effecting coastal cities everywhere in the country. The rising acidity levels in the oceans threaten our fish populations and more importantly the algae growth which accounts for 50% of the atmospheric oxygen we breathe. Larger storms will cause more and more damage as time goes on and they become more severe due to the air’s ability to hold more water. With this in mind, we will also see less water deposited in the form of snow and glaciers, a main water source for many places in the United States. The U.S. climate report reads off like a disaster preparedness plan, informing its citizens not only of the future consequences, but of real effects that are happening now and will only get worse. This country has had to deal with man-made disaster before. Vested interests have always pushed us towards inaction, but the people of the United States have always been able to move our government to safer standards in environmental policy. The Dust Bowl that ravaged the Midwest during the 1930s was fixed through aggressive legislation to plant trees, invest in soil conservation practices, and the creation of the Department of Agriculture. The Clean Air Act of 1970 removed dense smog in urban areas, and helped millions of people from harmful chemicals such as lead being dumped into the air. Can the United States rise up once more to face this new, imminent challenge?

Technology can be both the boom and the bane of growth. Looking back at the 1930s, agriculture in the United States was reaching a technological revolution. Equipment like the steam-powered tractor, and the combine were becoming commonplace in farm life. Plows were able to go deeper and smoother into the land than ever before. With the armistice in place after World War I, wheat prices shot up to heavily to nearly $2.50 per bushel due to the shortage and uncertainty of Europe’s ability to produce it following the war. (Rajan & Ramcharan) This, coupled with the influx of purchasing through credit, meant that farmers were looking to expand on their now highly profitable staple crops. However, in 1920 wheat prices fell by roughly 56% to around $1.40 per bushel due to Russia recommencing its crop exports (Rajan & Ramcharan). This trend continued through the decade. With newly indebted farmers trying to still churn a profit, and new machines to cultivate previously infertile land, farmlands expanded dramatically in the 1920s. “In just five years, 1925 to 1930, another 5.2 million acres of native sod went under the plow in the southern plains-an area the size of two Yellowstone National Parks.” (Egan, 58) These practices were highly unstable, and became quite evident when a drought hit the Midwest in the 1930s. All of this uprooted land turned to dust as winds swept it across the country in what is now known as the Dust Bowl. This forced approximately 3.5 million people to migrate from America’s breadbasket as dust and high winds made their native homes unbearable. (Worster, 49)

This unlikely series of events is known as one of the worst man-made disasters in history, but the United States solved it. When Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) rolled out his New Deal which included what is considered the largest and most concentrated effort in disaster mitigation in U.S. history. The U.S pushed radical efforts to save what it could environmentally while alleviating the victims of these dire circumstances. The Taylor Grazing Act 1934 allowed the federal government to take over 80 million acres of public domain land to be reserved as “grazing districts.” This meant land where no intensive agriculture could be done in order to preserve the deep rooted grass that holds onto the top soil. (BLM.gov) Along with this, the new Department of Agriculture created a Soil Conservation Service which sought innovative ways to curb this disaster further including the Great Shelterbelt Project. This employed thousands of bankrupt farmers and members of the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant trees in 100 mile long belts to reduce the effects of prevailing winds on the soil. By 1939, “over 200 million trees and shrubs were planted on 30,000 farms—a total length of 18,600 miles in all.” (foresthistory.org) On top of this, the Soil Conservation Service paid farmers to practice soil conservation techniques such as crop rotation, strip farming, and terracing on their farms. In 1936 alone, this incentive program gave farmers the opportunity to apply these techniques to 4,469,270 acres of farmland. (Miller, 120) These measure were quick and powerful and led to a 65% reduction in soil erosion and by the time the rain finally came in the fall of 1939 the Great Plains were already on their way to recovery. (American Experience) The United States confronted this issue with widespread environmental policy and it worked.

Global warming is not something that seems visible. Well not in the same sense as 100 mile long curtains of torrential dust. It does not seem immediate. At least not in sense that people are not being forced out of their homes due to severe drought. For all we know this is just scientific speculation, just a mere matter of probability thrown in to scatter plots and fancy charts. The government is not always so quick to jump on the side of the environment, especially when its facilitators question scientific authority.

There was another time when scientific evidence was called a boogie man by those in power. In the time that followed the Great Depression, another great boom in industry hit the United States. Things were going well for the nation, but environmental concerns rose once again, but this time its presence was unseen, and its effects subtle. Back in the 1920s a type of fuel additive called tetraethyl lead, an incredibly toxic substance, began being used as an octane booster and engine compressor.(Organometallics 5177) For nearly 50 years this substance was being dumped into our atmosphere on a massive scale. A scientist named Clair Patterson took it upon himself to expose this specter to the public. With years of research, and countless miles traveled to the north and south poles and the middles of oceans. He gathered evidence from around the world that overwhelmingly stated his case:

“He compiled lead entering the environment from gasoline, solder, paint and pesticides and showed that they involve very substantial quantities of lead compared to the expected natural flux. He estimated that the lead concentration in blood for many Americans to be over one-hundred times the natural level.” (Tilton)

Despite this evidence, he was charged with being a fear mongering zealot by his peers and government officials. Patterson was persistent, thankfully. Powerful special interest plagued congress and government agencies much like they do now. Car manufacturers argued that they would not be able to adapt. Scientists hired by these interests refuted Patterson’s claims. Years and years of fighting against government officials, and even calling them out on their close ties with the lead gasoline industry led to slow, but growing support from the public. (Tilton) The scientific evidence began to be heard through the clutter of polarizing political rhetoric.

By 1970, the new Environmental Protection Agency passed the Clean Air Act. By December of 1973 an amendment was made to phase out the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline.(Tilton) Today the amount of lead in our atmosphere is back near natural levels. Since 1980 lead has been reduced in the air by 91% thanks to a stubborn scientist who would not back down from the truth. The EPA would then go on to phase out fluorocarbons being used, the main group of chemicals responsible for damaging the earth’s ozone, in 1978. Today that hole in the upper atmosphere is on its way to a full recovery. (EPA) Although the lives saved cannot be directly measured from this, the sheer amount of human productivity saved by making everyone’s lives healthier makes this one of America’s triumphs in protecting the environment. And guess what? The fuel and aut9o industries adapted and continued to flourish.

The United States Climate Action Report 2014 opens with this about the IPPC’s Fifth Assessment Report on global warming:

“It marshals unassailable evidence of the perils of inaction: Summertime Arctic sea ice volume has shrunk 70 percent since 1979, 12 of the 13 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, and the oceans are 30 percent more acidic than they were a century ago. Bottom line: Climate change is real, it’s happening now, and human beings are the cause.” (USCAR)

This most recent report is something even the loudest deniers of global warming cannot ignore. Now, 97% of scientists agree that global warming is happening and its cause is anthropogenic. Even as the energy industries are lobbying hard to maintain their profitable cash cow of fossil fuels, the United States is getting progressively more aggressive and outspoken about climate change and its harsh realities. President Obama has already doubled the U.S.’s renewable energy sources since being elected, as well as higher standards on vehicle emissions and fuel efficiency. (White House) The president’s most recent collaboration with the EPA aims to reduce power plant emissions by 30% by the year 2030, a fairly sizable reduction considering the size of the U.S. (EPA) The outcry over these changes still boils to a fervor from pundits making claims about the inherent economic destruction any attempt to fix it will cause. It rings true to Clair Patterson’s struggle and his immense effort to convince America of lead pollution. It rings true to the Dust Bowl and the nation-wide effort to save the Midwest.

The Climate Action Report should be more than a wake up call to the people of the U.S. Although large scale action is taking place, it is not enough to stop this warming trend. The United States Government has responded in the past when people have been persistent, and the science irrefutable. It has responded and excelled at producing results and this time it does not have to be different. It is up to the people of this country to not just try and be environmentally friendly, but push the agenda and get the point across that immediate and significant action must be taken by the government to change the way we produce energy.

This leaves us to where we are today; staring into the face of the biggest challenge humanity has faced. No plague or war in history can really compare to the catastrophic possibilities of global warming. Continuous positive feedback loops are beginning to snowball together sending our climate into an irreversible climate shift. (Cosmos) Like some two headed monster composed of the previously discussed events, climate change poses unique challenges. We are beginning to see the rise of environmental refugees and its impact noticeably becoming dramatic in places all around the world and desertification of land, just like the Dust Bowl except on a much grander stage. This is also on an entirely different plane than simply removing compounds from fuel and household products. The by far largest contributing factor to global warming is the by product of the fossil fuels our society runs on. Without fundamental changes to the energy industry, we cannot hope to contain this imminent breakdown of our human-friendly climate.

Our culture around consumption needs to change. Any denial at this point claiming of economic devastation cannot be taken seriously when looking at the alternatives. We as Americans, and as part of the human race need to make a decision really soon. We need to decide what kind of species we want to be. Do we want to allow the effects of global warming to continue to expand, to reach that breaking point of our species? Or can we make the decision that we are smart, intelligent beings and that if we work together we can rise to any challenge, even those caused by our ignorance and negligence. It’s choice to live blindly in our own small world or face a foe together and devote our species to something bigger. This country has faced environmental problems in the past and continued to thrive, it can do it again.

“[W]e’re pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, at a rate not seen on Earth for a million years. And there’s scientific consensus that we’re destabilizing our climate. Yet, our civilization seems to be in the grip of denial, a kind of paralysis. There’s a disconnect between what we know, and what we do.

Being able to adapt our behavior to challenges is as good a definition of intelligence as any I know. If our greater intelligence is the hallmark of our species, then we should use it, as all other beings use their distinctive advantages, to help ensure that their offspring prosper, and their heredity is passed on, and that the fabric of nature that sustains us is protected. Human intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen. The ease with which it can be sweet talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired tendencies, sometimes themselves disguised as the light of reason, is worrisome. But if our intelligence is the only edge, we must learn to use it better, to sharpen it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies… If we do this, we can solve almost any problem we are likely to confront in the next 100,000 years.”

-Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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References:

(2014). The Immortals [Television series episode]. In Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey .FOX Broadcasting Company.

American Experience: TV’s most-watched history series. (PBS) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/dustbowl/

Egan, T. 2006. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 58.

Lead. (2013, August 13). EPA. Retrieved June 12, 2014, from http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/lead.html

Miller, C. (2003). From Depression to Atomic Power. The atlas of U.S. and Canadian environmental history (p. 120). New York: Routledge.

Organometallics (5177). (2003). The Rise and Fall of Tetraethyllead. : American Chemical Society.

Rajan, R., & Ramcharan, R. (2012, May 30). The Anatomy of a Credit Crisis: The Boom and Bust in Farm Land Prices in the United States in the 1920s.1. FRB: Finance and Economics Discussion Series: Screen Reader Version. Retrieved June 12, 2014, from http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2012/201262/

Taylor Grazing Act. Bureau of Land Management. http://www.blm.gov/wy/st/en/field_offices/Casper/range/taylor.1.html

The USDA Forest ServiceThe First Century (The Great Depression Era, 1933-1942)

http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Publications/first_century/sec4.htm

Tilton, G. R. (1998, January 1). Clair Cameron Patterson 1922-1995. . Retrieved June 12, 2014, from http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/patterson-clair-c.pdf

United States Climate Action Report. (n.d.). . Retrieved June 12, 2014, from http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/219038.pdf

Worster, Donald (1979). Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press. p. 49.