Yes, building U.S. cities in hot deserts w/o water wasn’t a great move - but too few know that HEATING homes uses more energy than COOLING does.
Homes in Miami use less energy to control climate than homes in Minneapolis, but we don’t finger-wag about the foolishness of building in cold places.
"Phoenix has lower per capita carbon emissions than Boston" (almost entirely due to heating in Boston) is one of those factoids people get really mad at you if you tell them.
people also don't like hearing that Phoenix has been a continuously inhabited site of fixed agriculture and dense population for several thousands years and is not, in fact, a dumb or unsustainable place to build a city (though it is, in my opinion, unpleasantly hot)
It's frustrating what wasteful water uses people internalize and talk about (golf courses, ai) versus the actual major water risks (bad agriculture policy)
Basically every single other thing is a rounding error compared to "we insist on growing cash crops in the desert because it makes us a little more money"
Agreeing and extending. It's frustrating when you agree with some of that critique (e.g. maybe golf courses in the desert aren't the best idea) but get told you're still a problem when you don't fully agree with every item (e.g. okay with golf courses in otherwise naturally wet areas).
I have gathered the lion's share of the water shortage is about agriculture (in Arizona they grow alfalfa for Saudi Arabia; in California they violently resist the slightest suggestions of water efficiency measures) -- and always has been
One issue is also that we just happen to be at the low point of a several century water cycle, so like 120% of the Colorado is allocated to various rightsholders and both Phoenix and Tucson used to have much more substantial rivers
To be clear the Gila River would perk back up substantially if they stopped growing cotton and fucking alfalfa, but the Santa Cruz was navigable when the Spanish showed up and is now dry most of the year
When it comes to water use the lawns (which I do dislike) are effectively a rounding error
Most of AZ's water use is agricultural, and a lot of that is due to legal doctrines that actually incentivize growing the most water intensive crops possible
still hilarious though that people in Phoenix irrigate their lawns by just flooding the whole thing
the first time I saw that I thought a pipe had burst and I called municipal utilities
Yeah - I mean, that stuff certainly seems more wasteful, especially given water needs for everyone else and the costs it passes on, but it's not a global issue in the same way as ghg
There’s a lot of towns in the southwest that are way older than “america” even if we only count the ones built by Europeans.
They were not establishing Santa Fe in 1610 with air conditioning in mind.
as a noted golf hater, it pains me to admit that most dry places have converted their golf course watering to be done with gray-water treated wastewater rather than freshwater and they no longer represent the huge waste of water resources they used to
Okay, but I am still going to hate on the one built in a public park near me that takes land meant for the many and makes it off limits to all but a few.
it's not the city that's the problem, it's all the agriculture in Arizona. We give free/subsidized water to all of these welfare queen farmers out West, they suck up all the water, and regular folks get screwed.
Wasn't area Phoenix is on abandoned by its previous inhabitants because of the last cyclic mega-drought in the Southwest, and the 19th Century settlers had to dig out and unblock the dried irrigation canals, hence the name of the new city?
Wouldn't it be dependent on what the water source the city is using and how many ways that water source is being split? It seems to me that it is possible, but it we need much more attention to paid to water usage sustainability.
it is true though that albedo changes from recent urbanization have helped make things particularly unpleasant (though they're learning and fixing it!)
water is a massive problem in arizona but it's almost all for cash-crop agriculture that gets exported out of state. the region has plentiful water to the support the actual human population and industrial uses.
IIRC it’s similar in Las Vegas/southern Nevada in general, the water use has actually decreased their use of the Colorado river while population has grown.
Not just per capita but in total.
(By doing things like getting rid of many lawns, which are stupid)
Las Vegas has gotten so good at water conservation the city is now a net *contributor* to the Colorado River, pumping less water out than they allow to run back in
when I was living in the Bay Area, there was huge debate about drought water restrictions and people converting their lawns to more water-friendly native plants. The NIMBYs of course all hated it.
Our condo did a conversion & nobody's housing values fell. Hahaha.
Much of human/industrial use which could be closed systems and mostly recaptured. You put it on a field and it's either going into the product or back to the clouds to fall again in Texas/Louisiana.
