Phoenix, Az.: Climate Change Denial HQ will be First Urban Victim of … Climate Change (deBuys)

William deBuys writes at








In Flight From the Sun









Water, Water, Everywhere (But Not for Long)









Burning Uplands










Copyright 2013 William deBuys


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7 Responses

  1. You know? People are stupid! Instead of to the politicians, they need to turn the government over to the farmers and animal husbanders. In every situation where you have farming or grazing, it makes sense to rotate the resources and even let some areas lie fallow for periods of time in order to allow Nature to heal the wounds inflicted by its ‘most intelligent’ beings. This works to the advantage of all, from the raw resource to the consumer.
    It would make better sense to occupy cities for periods of time then rotate the citizens when resources (such as water) get low. Leave the communities in caretaker status for a specified period of time then rotate people back in once things have returned to ‘normal,’ unless they don’t recover. It may be said that natural migration is already addressing this but I would counter with this happening only in times of crises, not as a part of long-range planning processes.
    The situation in Phoenix is not unique. As the article points out, other communities are also affected and not only directly associated with Phoenix itself. The whole SouthWestern and MidWestern parts of the United States are affected by declining water resources, worst of all, with many other effects being felt throughout the rest of the U.S.* Beyond our borders, water conflicts or wars are not unknown or unconsidered concerns, especially in the Middle East.** And, to make things on the Korean Peninsula a little more interesting, Kim Jong-Un has this little dam that might just turn Seoul into a lake, highlighting the North’s ability to parch the South … or inundate it … at will.***
    It remains to be seen at what point in time the powers that be will figure out how to manage their human resources (i.e., citizens). Little can be done to alleviate water shortages in inland areas, most of which would not have many issues of this sort were it not for the ‘benefits’ of air conditioning, without which the migration to the South would never have been as intensive.
    Having lived in Northern California as a youngster, it always amazed me how much water was being sent to Southern California via the aqueduct.^ Whenever flying into ‘LA-LA Land,’ one has to remark at how many privately owned swimming pools there are, each one needing filling and replenishing on a daily basis. Once again, the struggle between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ comes to the fore, the politicians (of course) preferring to address the more popular ‘wants.’ Perhaps, at some point in the future, the populace will prefer to want ‘needs.’ But: what will it take?

    * link to
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    ^ link to

    • America doesn’t have farmers anymore. It has monster conglomerates like Archer Daniels Midland. Only giant corporations have the cash and technology to keep cheap food flowing out of an unnatural environment. So their advantage is growing as the weather gets worse and smaller farms fail.

  2. The hidden assumption may be that the people of Arizona, as a whole, WANT cities to survive. If we look at the Tea Party ideology, it is rooted in the traditional hatred of cities in the South and West. Cities are full of Commies, faggots and ni**ers (formerly Jews too, but they’ve been recategorized), so the urban mentality must be to blame. Glenn Beck called one iteration of his hate cult “We Surround You”. Meaning his redneck suburbs surround the pinko cities like Serb militias once surrounded and starved Sarajevo. Consider that a warning.

    They live in a fantasy where the suburbs could go on by themselves once the cities are finally destroyed or turned into concentration camps. They think the suburbs are the lineal descendant of Jefferson’s self-sufficient yeoman farmers and slave plantations and the King Ranch.

    They are wrong, but they will refuse to quit until they’ve tested the proposition. Senator Ted Cruz’s new obsession with supposed UN plans to destroy the American way of life by forcing everyone to live in cities (“Agenda 21″) is the new conspiracy theory to motivate the GOP in the future, succeeding the International Communist Conspiracy, the Islamic Caliphate Conspiracy, and the Global Warming Conspiracy. It will support GOP plans to cut off cities from all government funding whatsoever, destroy their liberal school systems, and throw as many of their ghetto residents in privatized prisons (labor camps) as possible. By ruining the cities, they will ruin their enemies. That’s the only measure that counts to them.

  3. I lived in Phoenix the first 18 years of my life. I remember when it hit 122 degrees in 1990. It hasn’t been quite that hot since.

  4. You know, with or without global warming, the worst possible of any planetary event could happen… individually or in groups. It’s all happened before.

    Citing as many as you can think of, and suggesting that global warming would make them happen is a poorly disguised scare tactic.

    Do you believe that people are stupid enough to actually believe this?

    • The question is, how many things have to go wrong for a society before it becomes dysfunctional in the face of its competition? Historical researchers now look into past climate patterns to discover the causes of famines that ruined great empires like Rome, as well as self-inflicted environmental damage like lead poisoning.

      How many things have to go wrong with the American way of life before we stop defending it as an absolute good?

  5. The link for the claim that the 2003 heat wave in Europe killed 70,000 people goes to a pay link at Elsevier link to

    That’s not a citation. Please drop the claim, or include a verifiable link. I am not going to pay to confirm your claim.

    The broader issue here is public access to science. The for-profit journals have tried to block and privatize access to knowledge that was created by scientists using the taxpayer’s dollar. Open journals like PLOS (Public Library of Science) are turning that trend around.

    Please use open sources, and ignore closed sources. Thank you.

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