Dust and carbon | The Salt Lake Tribune

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Ken Burns' new PBS documentary "The Dust Bowl" is a stark reminder of what can happen to our environment when greed takes the place of common sense and stewardship of the land.

Farmers in the 1920s eagerly plowed up the sod in the Plains states, ignoring the warnings of Native Americans and conservationists that the prairie sod was protecting grasslands and the aquifers deep under the sod. When the wheat market tanked, they plowed up even more land. The dust cloud storms of the 1930s were a man-made environmental disaster.

The tale brought to my mind the uncanny resemblance to our situation regarding global warming. Our nation has no right to ignore the threat from exceeding current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — just for the convenience of those living on our planet today.

However hard it will be on our pocketbooks and changes in our lifestyles, we must make the hard decisions to control the impending consequences of the use of fossil fuels.

Nanette Ferguson

Salt Lake City