The water knife becomes more prophetic every day...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23209924-the-water-knife
Either way, the situations described in the article, conservation, waste prevention, and innovation seem to be the exact opposite of that described in the Water Knife blurb, and will have the luxury of being applicable to places less arid. While California was having their record droughts, the opposite coast was experiencing flash floods.
If we can improve conservation, and dramatically improve transportation, it becomes easier to get water from places that have a surplus to places that have a deficit, which means we can push flood waters to areas with drought, and move our way up the Kardashev scale.
Edit: Forgot cold weather and volcanic activity. The cold weather sounds like something easy to disqualify, but considering the OP's assertion is that it's a bad idea to try to best nature, it seems that heating falls into that bucket.
The Piedmont area of Maryland, Virginia, North & South Carolina. Good climate, good farming, minimal natural disasters.
The Hudson River Valley of New York is similar, although a bit colder.
I've heard good things about the Portland, Oregon area, but I haven't been there. I suggest living east of I-5, again, though.
The rest of the United States has interesting weather.
Similarly most of the eastern seaboard is fine, and the intermountain west is similarly inhabitable with minimal meteorological issues.
I don't know where this trope that there are so many issues everywhere comes from.
In terms of snow that's a simple trade-off do you want an actual winter Y/N. It kills off a lot of pests which IMO makes it worth a lot, plus you get out of the monotony of dry vs wet that most tropical areas fall into. Some people like going further north so rivers / ponds freeze ect but again trade-off.
In general flooding is just expencive to deal with so people build there last. This is also why Katerina mostly flooded poor areas.
New England doesn't have hurricanes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, or massive forest fires. But the cold is serious. So many people move to the Sun Belt because of it.
All of the places I mentioned have substantial population growth because of their weather. In the Carolinas there are lots of Northerners who move down to Florida, discover how much the Summers suck here, then move back up as far as there. They call them Halfbacks.
The cold sucks here, guy. The summers are great but the fall, winter, and sometimes even spring can be pretty bad.
Here's a quote from it "The 100ft waves are even rare in great earthquakes, more often the waves are 10 to 30 feet, and they will not be nearly as big in the Puget Sound. So shaking, not waves, are the threat to the Puget Sound from coastal earthquakes. - John"
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3da1mh/we_are_earthqu...
That is true for a lot the U.S. but not everywhere. Take Germany, Austria or France, only a very small percentage of the land there is affected by earthquakes, drought, tornados, hurricanes, sea levels, floods, tsunami, brush fires, landslides, or avalanches.
So justifying a decision to live somewhere that is highly prone to one or more types of disasters with a glib assertion that "there really isn't anywhere good to set up camp" is not even wrong.
Second, I'm no historian, but I feel confident in asserting that for the entirety of history, a principal criteria for evaluating the suitability of an area for settlement is its proximity to fresh water. This criteria was intentionally, brazenly ignored in building Las Vegas - as well as much (most?) of the Sun Belt southwest.
Third, your geoengineering "solutions" are not realistic. Are you suggesting that we're going to move flood waters from (to use your own example) the east coast to the west coast? Or even from the Mississippi River to Las Vegas? In a world where our existing infrastructure is drastically, if not catastrophically, underfunded?
Where are these areas of surplus fresh water of which you speak? Lake Mead, Vegas's primary source of water, is 80 feet below historical levels. The rest of the Colorado River, serving seven states, is similarly depleted. Aquifers throughout California are near tapped out.
The bottom line is that vast areas of arid land were foolishly (over)developed for the banal reason that somebody was able to make a buck on it. People with money were able to buy government that allowed them to do what they wanted to make that buck.
I'm no doomsdayer, but the water wars have already begun, albeit at low intensity. One day, the demand is going to outstrip the supply and it's going to get very, very ugly, at least from a financial perspective, if not outright violence.
https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/12/18/what-new...
But hey, don't think it's over.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/07/8572876...
Man-made disasters are self-inflicted. Which is exactly what we have with the water issues in the southwest.
The one natural disaster that the east coast is frequently subjected to is hurricanes. But the damages are very localized, and wouldn't exist if we didn't insist on building on shorelines.
Not sure why my comment is getting down-voted, though.
Hurricane Sandy hit parts of NYC pretty hard.
Las Vegas is probably way better at water management than say the Bay Area, which most people don't criticize for this, even though we ship water from a billion miles away (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy).
There were artesian springs which served as a watering stop for wagon trains, and later the railroad.
But most of the valley is dry to the point of being parched.
1) Hetch Hetchy brings water to San Francisco from 167 miles away.
2) The Colorado River supplies 90% of Las Vegas's water and brings it from up to a 1,000 miles away.
3) Per person water use in SF for residential customers is 45.7 gallons.
4) Per person water use in Las Vegas for residential customers is 74 gallons.
So. No, Las Vegas isn't even close to being better at water use than the Bay Area.
What do you suggest they do with their water supply instead of powering their economy? Use it for farming? Give it to Los Angeles? Keep it for a non rainy day?