The Continuing Great Depression in Africa and Asia

Stephen Heins

I can’t help but reflect on the Great Depression of the 1930s and major "Extreme Weather” events which drove social/ political actions. The three major reasons for the Dust Bowl: Hot weather, a drought, and farmer malpractices.

First, The Great Flood of 1927 inundated farmland in the U.S. midlands and was the proximate cause for the Stock Market crash of 1929 as farmers defaulted on loans left-right-and- center. The nations of Europe were exhausted, defeatist, and economically fragile from the loss of an entire generation of working age men to the trenches of WW-I.

The North American Dust Bowl of 1930 - 1936 (the true "hottest” year on record) exacerbated the suffering.

Fortuitously, the warming of the planet produced hydrocarbons in abundance. Roosevelt’s New Deal acts did nothing to bring the U.S. out of the Great Depression. It was the gush of low cost petroleum which rejuvenated American industry. At outset of WW-II, America stood not just as the Arsenal of Democracy. We were the Gas Station of Democracy.

Which brings me to current state of global economics, energy poverty, and environmental politics. Why would the developed world want large swaths of political strife and energy poverty in Africa and Asia be forced to go through a Depression and Dust Bowl of their own?

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