An editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune raises the danger the American west has largely forgotten – erosion and dust: It was called “The worst hard time

An editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune raises the danger the American west has largely forgotten – erosion and dust: It was called “The worst hard time.” The Dust Bowl, when millions of square miles of formerly productive earth literally dried up and blew away, and took the hopes and fortunes of much of America right along with it.

There were many reasons for the disaster, a perfect dust storm of causes natural (eight years of drought) and human (plowing up the Great Plains). The result was a depopulation of large swaths of America’s midsection that have never recovered, mass migrations and social upheavals, and, to our credit, improved farming methods that take some care to keep the soil where it belongs. And it could very well happen all over again. This time, in Utah. And, when it does, it will be even more our fault than it was the last time. Because now, supposedly, we know better.

Experts at the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of California-Los Angeles have released a report showing that the Southwestern United States is on the brink of another kind of dust bowl. Again, it will be a result of many factors, including that the process begins with a climate that is generally pretty darn dry to begin with and is exacerbated by global climate change and local disregard for the sensitivity of our soils…

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, in 1936