and one person's dust becomes the condensation nuclei for rain downwind, even if it is a continent away.
The dust bowl just showed that humans are subject to the basic ecological principle of Adapt, Migrate, or Die.
if it wasn't for the dust bowl, the oranges wouldn't have been picked in california and cheap labor would not have been available in the Central Valley.
the ruined land left behind would not have consolidated into holdings large enough that they could afford to be farmed using rest, rotation, and basic soil conservation practices that do not work at micro-scales, and FDR would not have had the opportunity to change our democracy forever.
The downside was that it happened during a recession which magnified to a depression, not matched until 2000 when the bottom 50% of america lost half its wealth. (had the upper 50% lost any significant portion of ITS wealth, bush might even have won the election fair and square)
anyway, this is just a long-winded way of saying stuff happens, and people, cultures, and civilizations either adapt, migrate, or die.. period
We accelerated the pace of change, even in nature, perhaps, but our ability to adapt has accelerated at an even faster pace.
Sweating the change is just a waste of time IMHO as it is not a large enough problem to threaten mankind.
Global warming can be used as a political tool to wean us from fossil fuels, and that is perhaps a worthy thing, but it does not mean that the alternative is the seventh level of hell, either. Supply/demand economics will achieve the same end ultimately, and meanwhile we don't have to preach to China to clean up when it is us that have fouled the nest to start with.
Market Data 
Markets 
