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.
The diff is that people don't historically abandon the infrastructure if it gets real cold, unlike when areas get too hot to live or the water runs out :-)
Indeed, but as the south will soon find out, when it gets too hot to work outside to maintain the infrastructure, that air conditioning will start to fail rather often, followed by abandonment.
I'd beg you to pick almost any other city on earth than Dubai as an example of a place that "works."
That place is propped up by so many perverse incentives and exploited migrant workers that I'd never ever want another place to use it as a model.
