Welcome to Food for Thought … for the Weekend, where I give you in-depth coverage and data analysis that keeps you glued to your screens for a good reason, for once. Published on Fridays.
It’s the weekend. Almost. You can binge, or you can learn. Perhaps a bit of both?
And keep an eye for The Week that Was, published on Sundays, my curated, in the loosest sense of the word, look at what happened last week.
Today, we’re going to take a look at the American West, a place which is always in our minds, for so many reasons. Although “Americans,” understood as European-Americans, are a relative latecomers to the land that now comprises the American West (see map, below), the “West” looms large in our imaginations, even to those of us living in the eastern metropolises.
Of late our focus has been the massive fires plaguing California and Oregon. And with good reason. The images are stunning and terrifying. And the smoke has traversed the continent at times this summer, even producing unhealthy air in the Northeast.
Credit: Jeff Frost
California, that incredibly beautiful state with its remarkably favorable geography, is well known for its propensity for natural disasters—principally earthquakes and fires—so much so that Mike Davis once called the state a “Book of the Apocalypse theme park.”
The fires are an annual occurrence, “fire season,” which in recent years has started earlier and earlier, and ended later and later.
Let’s take a look at what the “West,” that is, the American West, actually is.
Map highlighting the western states, the “West,” of the lower 48:
Copyright © 2021 Franklin Mount
Physiographic Map of the USA:
Source: MiraCosta College
The original inhabitants were the native American peoples. From the map below, it’s clear that the Native American peoples lived in groupings that mirrored the geography. No straight-line boundaries here, although it must be noted that Native American cultures had radically different notions of land tenure than those found in our European-American perspective.
Credit: By U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Geological Survey
Rainfall has always been an issue everywhere in the West with the exception of the Pacific Coast north of the California Mountains and west of the Cascades. Which leaves almost the entire West.
The rain falls when and where it wants to, of course; moving it around after it hits earth has been our job. And the subject of our cultural imagination as well.
Credit: Paramount Pictures
Megadroughts have occurred regularly since the end of the last ice age, a little over 11,000 years ago.
And now!
Drought forces first water cuts on the Colorado River. They're just the beginning.
This map of the current two-decade long megadrought brings home the vastness of this steadily unfolding crisis.
Credit: NASA
Megadroughts have occurred for thousands of years in this region; the difference now is that the population of the West has grown from small settled and nomadic populations in the middle of the Nineteenth Century to almost 80,000,000 human beings, as shown by the chart below.
Source: US Census Bureau
Copyright © 2021 Franklin Mount
The below article, besides poetic descriptions of our predicament, extraordinary photography, and remarkable video documentation, also lets us in on the fact that over 4,000,000 acres burned in California last year.
Land of Smoke and Fire: Documenting California’s Endless Season of Heat
Now, I’ll bet you didn’t know that the West is also subject to mega-floods as well, such as the one that hit California in 1861 and 1862.
So now you know.
And, just in case you were wondering, climate change will make them more severe as well.
The below article contains some truly startling information about the mega-flood of 1861-62. Such as that the Central Valley, which today produces 25% of the nation’s food supply, was under up to fifteen feet of water, for months.
The Biblical Flood That Will Drown California
So, after this mega-drought, maybe invest in an ark building startup?
God Directs Miami Beach Man To Start Building Ark
Next week on Food for Thought: A look at how the Coronavirus has mutated more frequently and effectively than the lab leak theories.
If you don’t have enough to think about, I hope that this issue of Food for Thought will have alleviated that need.
Have a great weekend!