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)
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
There is a funny story about a bunch of Kriegsmarine POWs interned in AZ who had a map that showed a river going to Mexico, and when they bust out with the idea of making a raft to float down they come to a riverbed that is just bone dry, and sort of sheepishly go back to the internment camp
