Environmental Concerns in the 1930's and Today

There has been a large interest in many issues in the past decade, but few compare to the issue of global warming. Global warming is a huge environmental concern. One would be hard pressed to find someone in the United States who did not know what global warming was. Recently the NY Times published an article that the past decade has been the warmest in history. If environmental issues such as global warming are not addressed we will be looking at the same situation America found itself in during the 1930's, where a series of environmental issues caused a drop in agriculture and contributed to economic depression.
The environmental issues that were seen in the 1930's were poor topsoil management, rapid deforestation as well as crop management issues. These issues all contributed to the occurrence of the dust bowl. The dust bowl inhibited many agriculture operations from being profitable enterprises, and contributed further to a large population of unemployed and national economic depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt launched a series of programs that not only provided employment for many but also focused on environmental reclamation and preventing further environmental deterioration.
Today we are seeing the warning signs of an impending environmental crisis. The international weather agency has stated that the past decade has been the warmest decade we have ever seen. Also the past three decades have steadily increased in temperature since the 1960's. If the United States does not address this issue it could face serious repercussions. There could possibly be another large environmental disaster that affects the agricultural industry in such a way that the economy takes a turn for the worse. The major difference between the dust bowl of the 30's and global warming of today is that global warming is a worldwide issue. If a global environmental issue were to occur affecting world wide agricultural growth we may have a global economic epidemic on our hands.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/science/earth/09climate.html?ref=earth

http://drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm