Here they come again, telling us what we can and can't do with our own natural resources. This time it's about coal, that apparently boundless energy resource enriching our nation. Now the government, via President Obama, is telling us what to do about our coal. Increased environmental safety measures associated with extraction might reduce profits and could affect employment in our region. Here's where the confusion comes in. Most of us are absolutely certain we want money from coal extraction, the more the better. Many of us are also concerned about carbon loading the air we breathe. Meanwhile billions of tons of coal pass through Big Horn County via Burlington Northern tracks en route to the troposphere encircling our planet.
This brings us to our ongoing dilemma about what we should sacrifice in immediate benefits to ensure a survivable future. I grew up hearing stories about the bad old days of the dust bowl from my farming grandparents. Back in Kansas, in the early thirties, everyone knew that the government was confused. They were actually paying farmers to turn up clods of dirt in sterile fields across the plains. My grandpa knew it was nuts, but decided to make a little extra money with his moldboard plow and mule. He had a family to support and the drought virtually stopped income from farming. He draped the Hames collar over his mule's neck and hooked the traces to the plow. He leaned on the handles as he trudged back and forth across the long gone wheat field, turning up clods.
He knew it was pointless effort. Nothing could grow in those dry clods. The local Ag agent maintained that the clods would slow or stop the drifting dust. Most in the little Mennonite church on the prairie agreed this was a futile endeavor. It was already early July, getting hotter and drier, making plowing and planting a ludicrous effort. But money talked. He worked in the hot morning sun and earned the government-subsidized check calculated by the acres he plowed, as the government agent counted. The government was giving, and he might as well be on the take.
As he plowed, my grandfather recalled the days when lush wheat fields flourished before the rains stopped. He grieved for the loss of the green fertility and early prosperity of the plains. Now even the windmills struggled to find water for the few mangy critters and crazy people left on the prairie who actually owned some land. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away," intoned the preachers, leaving the farmers and the Chicago grain futures investors and bankers unaccountable for the environmental disaster of the American West Dustbowl.
As it turned out those crazy government bureaucrats were right. Those farmers, like my grandfather, played a vital role in preserving our national bread basket. The short-term solution worked. Billions of topsoil particles stopped bouncing into the air and landing in ditches and rivers where they didn't belong. The longer-term solution was deployed the following spring, and it also proved effective. New hedge rows were planted every square mile by the Civilian Conservation Corps (same government program that built bricks for Big Horn County Schools at CCC camps near Busby). These hedges supported the summer plowing efforts. Tiny particles of SiO2, the main ingredient of soil, no longer converted into clouds of dust, creating dust storm convections with ferocious winds. Those incredible storms had produced not just overwhelming dust, but also lightning, thunder, hair-razing electricity in the air, and fires where vegetation still existed. As my grandparents told me, the dust was sometimes so thick one could hardly see a hand held hand in front of one's face, depressing metabolism in all breathing creatures and causing untold deaths from dust pneumonia.
Later my grandparents moved on to Oklahoma where they once again found fertile ground and were able to make a living from the land. As a lad, I recall finding the old mould-board complete with wooden handles as I was on my way to catch frogs in the spring. Later that evening my Grandpa told us about plowing up the dirt clods in Kansas with a plow like that. To this day, I'm ever grateful for the efforts of those farmers who created a better world for me. Who knows what would have happened to my mother's family (and my own future) without the foresight of those government agents to mitigate environmental damage from bad farming practices. Nobody believed it would help at the time and would only lead to more ruin and destruction. Their persistence paved the way for real changes that have promoted sound agriculture to this day.
Maybe we should consider what is being proposed now to mitigate the effects of climate change. Given my family's history, the future economic toll of severe environmental damage is a much scarier for me than short term reduction in coal profits. Let's consider the future of our nation's soils and waters, and how much we're willing to do to protect our grandchildren's grandchildren.
--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
No comments:
Post a Comment