Making a Desert out of the Desert.

Huzzah to Yglesias for pointing out that settlement in an area once known as “The Great American Desert” is project likely to suffer from the occasional drought. If I recall my undergraduate history correctly, the period between 1870 and 1890 was one of milennially high rainfall in the Great Plains, which led to a situation in which the area was radically oversettled, well beyond what it could actually support. Drought in the area isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.