A look at terraforming the American West

I recently wrote about how the artificiality of life in a place like Arizona encourages the sort of thinking that sees life on the moon or Mars as a similar engineering problem. We can Terraform the American West is a prime example of the full arc of this sort of thinking.

One of the opening points is that millions of Americans already live in de facto terraformed habitats:

We’ve already Terraformed California and Florida. 63 million people live in sparkling prosperous modern metropolises that were formerly uninhabitable swamps, within living memory. How did we do this? Large scale infrastructure projects that moved natural resources, principally water, from one place to another.

As someone living on an artificial island below sea-level in the Netherlands, I do see the value in transformative engineering projects. The discussions on climate change could be improved by looking at it as an engineering problem rather than the sort of quasi-religious apocalypse requiring eco-asceticism to stave off.

But that perspective only goes so far. We should also be able to confront ourselves without uncomfortable questions and even less comfortable answers. Should we even build cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas?

I don’t mean to dismiss the article out of hand. The points about solar power becoming cheaper and more efficient could end up making some of the least sustainable places on the planet massive producers of renewable energy. Instead, my question is whether there are simpler, less-fragile solutions to ecological problem presented by the cities of the American West?

Earlier this year, The Atlantic wrote a long article about the politics and the practicality of water in Phoenix. Before looking at that, a response to the article, There’s a Reason People Keep Moving to Phoenix was published that brings up some relevant points to consider:

For many people, living in Phoenix makes perfect sense. Pleasant temperatures most of the year, relatively inexpensive housing, and a steady increase in economic opportunities have drawn people for 80 years, turning the city from a small desert outpost of 65,000 into a sprawling metro area of more than 5 million.

In short, people move to Phoenix for good jobs and affordable housing. These are political problems that could be solved elsewhere. It says a lot about our society that it’s easier to artificially sustain millions of lives in an inhospitable climate than it is to create jobs and build enough houses in other states.

There’s also a cultural draw that wasn’t directly touched upon in the article, namely that moving to Phoenix is a sort of fresh start. Once you cut through the platitudes of sunshine and cheap housing, this cultural restart is what drew my parents to Arizona from the midwest almost 50 years ago. Nobody cared if you had a funny sounding last name, whether you were Protestant or Catholic, or about much of the other cultural baggage that was so important to squabbling relatives in Wisconsin and North Dakota.

And thus I had the privilege of growing up in a place that was diverse without much fuss and pomp about it. I went to school next to a huge Intel facility that attracted immigrants from around the globe. All the kids happily played together without a care in the world. I don’t think this is the case in many parts of the US, and this is one of the things I value the most about the culture that’s developed in Phoenix.

The original article, Phoenix is a Vision of America’s Future, is a two-hour read and comes to a conclusion similar to what I’ve said above:

Civilization in the Valley depends on solving the problem of water, but because this has to be done collectively, solving the problem of water depends on solving the problem of democracy. My visits left me with reasons to believe that human ingenuity is equal to the first task: dams, canals, wastewater recycling, underground storage, desalination, artificial intelligence. But I found at least as many reasons to doubt that we are equal to the second.

The problems plaguing the American West can’t only be solved with Muskian technological innovations. Keeping people in the West will involve massive engineering feats, but those will be secondary to finding the political will to do anything beyond squabbling.

This is ultimately why the Netherlands, with its own massive terraforming-esque projects feels like a safer bet. At least for now, the idea of compromise and keeping water management above the fray of partisan politics is deeply engrained in the culture. There’s no guarantee that will continue. American-style politics as entertainment is being exported. The simplification of complex topics into social media quips will test whether the polder model of democracy continues.