Desert Water
Human life in the desert has been a perpetual struggle. Expanding human life in desert cities is all the more so. The efforts undertaken by government to keep urban human populations thriving are considerable. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia demonstrates this by financing a desalination industry that supplies fresh water to what the government foresees as a growing populace.
Josh in comments drew attention to the subject, asking why we as a species are so hellbent on living in inhospitable environments plagued by severe drought, for instance, or earthquakes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters. While I can’t say I know a satisfactory answer to the question beyond “Because we can,” the amount of equipment and expense put into producing potable water in the desert is impressive when you read the details. From the linked article:
The [Saudi Arabian] national Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) now reports production capacity of 11.5 million cubic metres per day at 30 facilities.
That growth has come at a cost, especially at thermal plants running on fossil fuels.
By 2010, Saudi desalination facilities were consuming 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, more than 15 percent of today's production.
But change is in the plans:
The question is how much the environmental toll will continue to climb.
The SWCC says it wants to cut 37 million metric tonnes of carbon emissions by 2025.
This will be achieved largely by transitioning away from thermal plants to plants like Jazlah that use electricity-powered reverse osmosis.
Solar power, meanwhile, will expand to 770 megawatts from 120 megawatts today, according to the SWCC's latest sustainability report, although the timeline is unclear.
People (like me) who are skeptical about so-called renewable energy like solar would be foolish to think the technology is fundamentally useless and wasteful. It has its challenges, and it isn’t the answer to society-wide energy demand—at least when considering its current capabilities. But it is a reasonably mature technology that solves specific problems and is suitable in circumstances where the sun is generally intense and the electricity demand can handle a certain amount of fluctuation. As long as the true market costs are allowed to reflect how scarce the material inputs are, there’s no reason to reject the technology categorically.
Why live in hazardous places? Why build in places with high risk for natural disaster?
Because the benefits outweigh the risks. The benefit of controlling the mouth of the Mississippi was enormous. When coastal property was cheap, there was little risk in putting up a fishing shack or small cottage for pleasure. Now, the economic benefits of years of tourism (aided by flood insurance) outweigh the economic cost of the storm that will come one year, at least the costs that are accepted (who cleans up the mess than ends up in the sounds and marshes and waterway?)
My mom grew up on the Neuse River in eastern North Carolina, in a cinderblock house built by my grandfather. Their house was damaged twice during the storms in the 1950s and once ended up on the front page of a national newspaper. They rebuilt. Long story short, proximity to the ocean outweighs the risks of storms, but they are prudent and independent.
David Hackett Fischer has pointed out that Americans, Southerners in particular, have viewed buildings as impermanent, built for a specific purpose but, on a continent as big and resource-rich as ours, largely disposable.
We do it because we can manage the risks so they don't outweigh the benefits. The benefits may not be financial but financial conditions make it possible. That being said, the government funded financial mechanisms that allow us to keep on keeping on need to be reevaluated.
Regarding today’s topic, I’m with Josh. A couple of years ago a very nice couple bought a dining room table set from us. They were not young, but younger than us, and they were looking forward to moving to AZ. Why??!! There’s no water to speak of, and it gets incredibly hot (even before climate changes). I still remember my dad commenting on the fact that we were fortunate to live close to large bodies of fresh water (Lake Superior and Lake Michigan) because there was already problems with people living in places that didn’t have their own water supply.