I should confess that I have a great weakness for road trips, so pursuing those topics also permitted me, during the research and the shooting, to continually experience the great landscapes of our country.

We’ve been seeing the combination of rising temperatures and devastating drought in some of the same regions plagued in the 1930’s.  What do we take from the Dust Bowl experience now that we’re faced with a new set of risks, again during a time of economic hardship?
 
I think the main lesson of the Dust Bowl is one of humility toward nature and the environment. We tend to assume we can do anything we want, even bend nature to our wishes, and there won’t be any consequences. But the cataclysm of the Dust Bowl is the starkest possible reminder that doing so can have disastrous results. We have to take care of the land that sustains us.

I think another lesson from the Dust Bowl is one of the role of government, which applies to today as well. The Dust Bowl occurred in the depths of the Great Depression, so the people of the southern Plains were struck with a double whammy of catastrophes. Without the efforts of the Roosevelt administration – things like the WPA and CCC and programs that offered assistance to struggling families and help and advice to suffering farmers – much of the Southern Plains would have become depopulated, with a Sahara-like desert in the heart of the nation. That’s worth remembering.