They’re also not in areas likely to be inundated by flooding, and they are not in places where their expansion destroys forests. They are low density today too meaning they have tremendous room to build up.
Lack of freeze thaw cycles means roads and buildings last longer, reducing energy use in constant repair and CO2 from constant reapplication of concrete and asphalt.
Water is their big problem but with cheap renewable energy that problem is solvable either with pipelines or desalination.
Lastly air conditioning takes less power than winter heating in extremely cold climates and like I said above is more easily fueled by renewable energy. Solar generation peaks exactly with A/C demand. Cities up North tend to burn tons of fossil fuels for heat and that is harder to decarbonize. Heat pumps help but it’s still more intensive than A/C.
If the water problem is solvable these cities could become far more sustainable than say New York or Chicago due to all their cheap solar.
Pretty big "if", gotta say.
So, they kill their big advantage by using it to kill the biggest disadvantage? Where is the gain in this?
And it's not OR situation, but AND. They would need both desalination plants and lots of pipelines to just alleviate, not SOLVE the water problem.
I do think we will be forced by climate change to relocate some agriculture. We probably won’t be growing water heavy crops in the Southwest in 50 years.
The Odd Lots podcast recently had an episode "An Arizona Farmer on How to Grow Alfalfa in the Middle of the Desert":
> Due to a combination of drought, climate change and booming growth, Arizona is facing looming water scarcity. But for all the sprawl and population increase, the overwhelming amount of water used in the state is not consumed by residences, but rather farmers. So naturally, many argue that we should be doing less agriculture in the desert and move the production of cotton, alfalfa and various vegetables towards places with more rain. On this episode, we speak with Trevor Bales, the proprietor of Bales Hay Farm & Ranch in Arizona about his family’s history in the state and why he thinks this dry desert is a great place to grow alfalfa.
* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/an-arizona-farmer-on-how-to-g...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owieQnPYfT8
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36741112
One observation: some of the earliest civilizations in history have been in arid areas, e.g., Mesopotamia, Egypt. They just happen to be settled near rivers—just like the Native American did with what is now know as Phoenix:
> The Hohokam people occupied the Phoenix area for 2,000 years.[23][24] They created roughly 135 miles (217 kilometers) of irrigation canals, making the desert land arable, and paths of these canals were used for the Arizona Canal, Central Arizona Project Canal, and the Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct.
Cities aren't farmland, building one in a desert is basically an excellent use of land.
Aka: be smarter with water
Moreover: Saudi Arabia exists.
Why Saudi Arabia is the World's Most Doomed Country
Climate change is real. But it isn’t the cause of every problem, and it isn’t evidenced by extreme weather phenomena per se.