Reporter Duane Schrag can be reached at 822-1422 or by e-mail at dschrag@salina.com.
By reinventing their economic model, Americans survived the crippling Depression. But the solution was only temporary, said Don Worster, a professor of American and ecological history.
Today America — indeed, the whole world — faces new storms.
“The solution we found in the 1930s has become our nemesis,” said Worster.
Worster, distinguished professor of American History at the University of Kansas’ Hall Center for the Humanities, gave a lecture titled “Feeling the heat: Global warming and the future of the Great Plains” at the Salina Art Center Tuesday evening.
He believes America will have to do nothing less than reinvent the role of government. The author of “Dust Bowl: the Southern Plains in the 1930s”, which received the Bancroft Prize in American history, Worster sees parallels between the 1930s and today.
While the dust storms were certainly the product of drought, they were also the caused by a “speculative fever” that gripped the agriculture community.
“This is the lecture I would have liked to have given from the gallery in Topeka the other day,” Worster said, a reference to the intense legislative effort to allow two new coal-fired power plants in Holcomb.
Reporter Duane Schrag can be reached at 822-1422 or by e-mail at dschrag@salina.com.
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