I am reminded of a Senate hearing during the Dust Bowl — is it an apocryphal story? An enormous windstorm picked up thousands of tons of dust from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and sent it cross country.
A Department of Agriculture official trying to get the government to act heard of the storm, and tracked it. He asked a Senatte committee meeting on the Dust Bowl to take an early lunch break in a hearing.
When the committee hearing resumed after lunch, a senator asked the official if the Dust Bowl was really that big a deal — what would the effects be?
The Ag official got up from the table, went to the windows and opened them, so the dust could swirl into the hearing room. He said the dust had been topsoil used for farming a couple of days earlier. The dust had blown into Washington just after noon.
Congress acted. U.S. defeated the Dust Bowl and restored millions of acres of farmland.
In New York and other eastern cities this week, smoke from wildfires in Canada settled in after a nearly 3,000-mile journey.
Who will act this time?
Global heating dries out western forests, and some effects cause trees to die, making them great tinder for fires. It’s clear to anyone who looks, to anyone who loves science, to anyone who loves Liberty.
Tip of the old scrub brush to @corinne_perkins on Twitter.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 