With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe.
On this episode of Locus Focus, we talk with William deBuys, author of A GREAT ARIDNESS, about what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. We look at how this semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States.
Writer and conservationist William deBuys is the author of seven books, which range from memoir and biography to environmental history and studies of place. A native of Maryland, he came to New Mexico as a research assistant, and soon developed a deep relationship with the cultures and landscapes of the Southwest. DeBuys’s books include ENCHANTMENT AND EXPLOITATION: THE LIFE AND HARD TIMES OF A NEW MEXICO MOUNTAIN RANGE; RIVER OF TRAPS; SALT DREAMS: LAND AND WATER IN LOW-DOWN CALIFORNIA; SEEING THINGS WHOLE: THE ESSENTIAL JOHN WESLEY POWELL; VALLES CALDERA: A VISION FOR NEW MEXICO’S NATIONAL PRESERVE; THE WALK and THE LAST UNICORN. DeBuys’s shorter work has appeared in Orion, The New York Times Book Review, Doubletake, Story, Northern Lights, High Country News, Rangelands, and other periodicals and anthologies.
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