Saturday, August 2, 2014

The reverse "Grapes of Wrath"

By The Digital Hairshirt
Suffering in its third year of drought, more than 58 percent of the state is currently in "exceptional drought" stage, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map. That marks a huge jump from just seven days ago, when about 36 percent of the state was categorized that way. 
If the state continues on this path, there may have to be thoughts about moving people out, said Lynn Wilson, academic chair at Kaplan University and who serves on the climate change delegation in the United Nations. 
"Civilizations in the past have had to migrate out of areas of drought," Wilson said. "We may have to migrate people out of California."
There is a startling contrast to this notion, given that many Californians trace the arrival of their families to the "Okies," those people from Oklahoma and the Plains state who migrated to California to escape the great drought that reduced their homes to a virtual dust bowl in the 1930's.  Few people won't recognize an iconic photograph from that time, the image of a migrant mother caught by Dorothea Lange:


So will we now have "Calis" moving east?  And who would be selected to move?... 


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