Phoenix is expected to get even hotter, but is it doomed? This researcher and journalist say no

It’s Phoenix in the summer. And it’s hot. That is no surprise in the Valley of the Sun. But, things are changing. It’s getting hotter — and drier. More people are dying every year from the heat. We are running out of water. We can’t build anymore. The urban heat island is stopping nights from cooling down like they used to. Planes can’t even take off.

Those are probably all headlines you’ve read in recent Phoenix summers. We all might as well all leave now.

But, we’re not. In fact, Phoenix is still growing — and fast. But, how much longer can that continue with all of this doom and gloom predicted in a climate changed future? Will we end up a 130-degree, deserted wasteland? A massive city dried up in the desert sun?

Matei Georgescu, Ph.D., and Ray Stern say no. But it’s complicated.

To find out more, The Show sat down with Georgescu, director of ASU’s Urban Climate Research Center, as well as Stern, a longtime Arizona journalist who’s debunked predictions of Phoenix’s apocalyptic future for years.

The conversation started with the big question: Are we doomed?

Is Phoenix doomed?

MATEI GEORGESCU: Absolutely not. I mean, people can be asking that same question and were asking, for example, why is New Orleans expanding the way it is? Or why is Miami expanding and growing the way it is? And probably argue that those cities are in much greater danger in the near term than Phoenix is currently, or will be for the foreseeable future.

LAUREN GILGER: What about like, scientifically? Like, is the heat not as big of a concern, or are the concerns exaggerated about the problems that the heat will cause in the future?

GEORGESCU: Depends who you ask. The numbers are the numbers. And it’s easier to look at the observations. So if you go back 30 or 40 years ago, Phoenix would experience, let’s say, 10 to 20 days of 110+ Fahrenheit days during the summer on average. There are some summers that are less, some that are more. You look at last year it was, I think, 55 days of 110+, and I believe every day in July. That’s 31 consecutive days of 110+. That really screams at you that something is happening.

Of course, these are two end points in time. So you want to try to connect these end points and get a feel for what the trend is. And the trend is clear. We are warming. There is no denying that. The question is what are we doing about it as a human species, as Phoenicians? Are we adaptable? Are we ingenious? Can we adapt to this climate and can we thrive into the future? I think that’s the more appropriate question.

And in my opinion, the answer is unequivocally, absolutely yes. We can adapt and we will adapt.

GILGER: I love that optimism. Ray, let me turn to you. You wrote a long piece about this exact issue and these exact kind of accusations about the future of Phoenix and the Valley in general for the Phoenix New Times almost a decade ago now. You’re sort of debunking a lot of the myths surrounding the future of Phoenix from what you see. It’s called “Apocalypse No,” I should say.

What’s interesting here to me is not that you were able to kind of disprove some of these big claims about how Phoenix will never be around in the future, but that this is a narrative that’s been around for so long.

RAY STERN: It really has. This long preceded the story that I did 10 years ago. But the story that I did was kind of a push back against sort of flurry of this mythmaking that was coming out just after the recession. As you recall, Phoenix was very heavily hit by the recession. We lost 50% of our property values. People were moving out. People were very worried about the future of Phoenix.

And the climate change and the sort of anti-Phoenix crowd took the ball and ran with it. And we started seeing a lot more stories right around the beginning of the 2010s about how Phoenix had no future. There was a book, for example, it was called “Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City.”

It’s absolutely a ludicrous assertion, honestly. But a lot of people read that book, and so this myth that Phoenix is doomed and would either get too hot or we’d be completely out of water, is actually believed by a lot of people now.

GILGER: Yeah. And there’s also a narrative in the not just that we’re doomed, but also that we’re irresponsible for being here. Like that this city should not exist in the desert, at least not at this size, this scale. Yet it’s still been the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country for a lot of those years since you wrote that piece.

STERN: It has. And that’s actually one of the things that bugs me the most, because people are, if they’re not from here, they may be ignorant to the history of this place. But really, everyone in the United States should understand that here in the Phoenix area was one of the most technologically advanced Indigenous communities in North America. It was a civilization, the Hohokam, and they were here for 1,000 years. So you can’t tell me that this place isn’t built for a city. The reason that they were here for so long, by the way, is because there’s lots of water here.

GILGER: We’ll talk about water more in a minute, but it’s interesting you bring up the Hohokam because there’s also sort of a myth around them. Now that the reason they abandoned this valley after living here for a thousand years is part of why people think it will be abandoned again in our future.

STERN: Totally. But really there’s actually no proof of that. And there is proof that the Hohokam had endured massive droughts, over their thousand year history here. And when they apparently vacated the area — they didn’t vanish, obviously, they moved and some of them still lived here — but their civilization became much poorer for whatever reason. But it wasn’t in the middle of a massive drought.

How hot will Phoenix get this century?

GILGER: Yeah. So a long narrative in many senses here. Matt, let me turn to you. You mentioned that it is true and scientifically verifiable that we are warming, that it is getting hotter and that there are real concerns around that. What are the concerns from your point of view?

GEORGESCU: Well, one of the major concerns has to do with what we experienced last summer. So last summer was unique in many ways. We experienced, like we said a few moments ago, 55-some-odd days of 110 plus. In the second half of the current century that’s going to become a mainstream summer. It will no longer be an extreme situation.

So that takes a little bit of getting used to, not in terms of a biophysical adaptation perspective, but you think about water resources, you think about energy infrastructure. These are all important elements of ensuring that the livelihoods of Phoenicians and other desert areas across the U.S. and the globe can not only subsist, but thrive.

GILGER: Do we know how much, Matt, the climate here will be hotter in the future? There have been claims that it’ll be 130 degrees, right?

GEORGESCU: Yes, there have been such claims. It’s important to note that the hottest temperature ever recorded in Phoenix, and this goes back well over 100 years, was 122 degrees Farenheit back in 1990, I believe it was June of 1990. We haven’t touched that value since.

A couple of things to keep in mind. The longer that your record extends, the greater the likelihood that you’re going to break some record. It is very likely at some point within the near future, far future, it’s hard to say exactly when — that we’re going to hit 122 and 123 at some point. That’s going to happen. It’s almost inevitable only by virtue of extending this record. Now, when you add climate change on top of that, then the likelihood increases.

The prospects of hitting mid-130s, as was mentioned in some of the previous work that has been documented by Ray, is highly unlikely, highly unlikely. It’s just basic physics. Unless we have a runaway planet in which nobody will be living on this planet, we’re unlikely to see, temperatures in the mid-130s by mid-century, that’s just not going to happen.

What we’re very likely to see, however — and probably as soon as this decade — is a minimum temperature that doesn’t go below the triple digits. And so that’s going to make the situation completely different from what long-term Phoenicians have been used to. And that will be something that we’re going to have to deal with, again probably through midcentury and beyond.

Will we see more heat-related deaths?

GILGER: What about the tally of heat deaths, heat-related deaths? This is something that has been shooting up, right? In terms of the numbers from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s office, is this going to continue to be a problem? Can people live in this kind of heat safely?

GEORGESCU: So the answer is yes. People like us that spend most of their time indoors, roughly 90%, are going to have an easier time of adapting. And I think the question is for those that don’t have the financial resources, that are underhoused, and then it becomes an issue of, yes, you might be able to make it a night or two, but imagine the July situation that we were faced with last year, which will become a thing of the norm that will become very commonplace.

Then it becomes really debilitating, really very difficult to deal with. So there’s a policy issue, there’s a governance issue. And from the general population, the notion is, “Well, it’s not my problem. The city will figure it out.” There’s also a values issue to consider here. What can we collectively do to make sure that we don’t have to deal with these situations, or at least mitigate them to some extent?

STERN: Right. And last year, record number of 110-degree days in a row apparently contributed to the extra-high number of heat deaths that we had last year. It was quite a jump from the year before, 52% more.

It’s also important, I think, that people realize that about half of the heat death problem in Maricopa County is, in fact, a meth problem. Forty-seven percent of the heat deaths in Maricopa County last year were actually drug deaths that were heat associated. So heat was a contributing factor in 80% or so.

So basically, most of the drug-related deaths were meth related. So if you took meth out of this situation, that would really reduce our heat deaths by about half. And and just as a side note, meth is a drug that actually can cause heat stroke for anybody at room temperature.

GEORGESCU: Your comment, which has been substantiated numerously across the media and journal articles really highlights the socioeconomic element of this issue. It’s not merely a heat and temperature issue. There are other elements to consider here.

STERN: But also we just have to remember that that is about 2% of our society. And it’s a difficult situation. And I’m not going to, you know, downplay it. But the fact is that 98% of us live with either air conditioning or swamp coolers, and that will continue into the future.

This is a futuristic city. I guess you could say that that maybe there shouldn’t be a city here, or there wouldn’t be a city here, rather, if there was no such thing as air conditioning. Air conditioning is essential. And also electricity to keep those air conditioners running is essential.

Are we running out of water?

GILGER: So I want to talk about electricity in a moment. But let’s take a minute first to talk about water, because that’s the other big thing that comes up when we think about Phoenix’s future. Can you sustain this massive and growing city in the desert as we are, as everyone keeps saying, running out of water?

We know the Colorado River is shrinking. This is true: Lake Powell, our big reservoirs are shrinking. But is this your biggest concern, Matt?

GEORGESCU: So long as we continue to manage the local water sources as effectively as we have been, I think it’s not a major concern. In the southeastern Valley, SRP is your local water utility. And they manage wonderful watersheds in the northern highlands of Arizona.

Their concern is more with how do we retain all of the water that floods out of the reservoirs when we have an extreme winter, like we did two years ago or even last year? That’s a lot of water that was lost.

GILGER: Talk about counterintuitive there.

STERN: So much water running over the Tempe Town Lake. Exactly. Watching that, and there was no way to capture all of that,

GEORGESCU: That’s right. Now, if you live in the Northwest Valley, then you’ve got different concerns because your main source of water is the (Central Arizona Project). It’s the Colorado River. And with the Colorado River, what our research has shown — so we do both future projections, but we also look at the observations. We’ve actually shown that regardless of how you define Southwest — is it just Arizona or is it just Arizona, New Mexico, or is it California and Arizona? Regardless of what your definition is, precipitation hasn’t changed historically over the last 70 years.

GILGER: Wait, so you’re saying this narrative that we are getting drier in the sense that there’s less rain is not true?

GEORGESCU: Our results say that is not true. The question is: Where’s the water going? We agree that the world is warming. So with a warming world, you’re going to have more evaporation. And so that’s one source of the water loss.

But by far the biggest contributor is if we think of it in terms of a banking analogy, if you make $1 per day but take out $2 per day, then you’re going to be in the negative pretty soon. And so that’s what’s actually happening.

GILGER: Ray I want to ask you a little bit about the history here. Because one of the things that I always think is very interesting in talking about water in Arizona is that we’re actually pretty well off. And it’s because we’ve always known that we’re in a desert, right? Like we’ve planned for this for a long time.

STERN: Absolutely. We are a leader in water conservation. A lot of people don’t realize that the whole state uses less water now than it did 60 years ago. It’s wild. That’s both for agriculture and residents. And of course, the residential population has absolutely exploded over the last 60 years. So now we have 7 million people here using less water than a few hundred thousand 60 years ago.

This needs to continue. One of the biggest factors for saving all of that water is the 1980 Groundwater Management Act. And it’s not completely sufficient to go into the future. So there needs to be some tweaking in the laws and maybe some major pounding on some people that are really overusing water. And that probably needs to be curtailed to some extent, and I think it will.

Everyone sees the problem as something that needs to be adjusted. So I think that yes, we don’t know what the worst possible case scenario could be, but from what we know now, there will be enough water for the future.

And I guess I just wanted to point out, too, that some people may believe that the Colorado River and the CAP Canal will just completely stop flowing at some point, and that would be a kind of a disaster for this area. Fifty percent or so rely on that water. But does the data show that that is likely? And the answer is no.

People talk about the fact that Lake Mead and Lake Powell could go below dead pool, which is the term for what happens when you can no longer generate hydropower electricity. But it doesn’t mean that water won’t still flow over the CAP, through the canal. It’ll be less and we’ll have to deal with less. But I think that history has shown that we can deal with less.

What if the power goes out during a heat wave?

GILGER: Let me ask you, Matt, about a study that you did last year that did sound relatively doom and gloom about the future of the city, which was about our electricity use and capacity. You basically found that if we had a blackout during a heat wave, the results could be really catastrophic. Describe that a little bit for us and the implications there.

GEORGESCU: We asked a really simple question. And Ray, you mentioned a few minutes ago the low likelihood of dead pool. Well, actually, it’s important to kind of look at those sort of questions and ask, what are the possible consequences of this were it to happen? Because it’s this sort of incident that raises immediate alarm bells about what we can do now to prepare for this low likelihood event.

This low likelihood event was a four-day heat wave, the sort of heat wave that we experience here on an annual summertime basis, coincident with no electricity, so no electricity anymore available for anyone. And what our results indicate is that, first of all, if that were to happen, the number of emergency beds that would be required for all of the heat-related adverse outcomes, we don’t have that many in the Phoenix metropolitan area. We know that number now because of COVID.

STERN: It’s a tiny fraction, right?

GEORGESCU: It’s a tiny fraction. We would need something like 80,000. We have something like 3,000 emergency hospital beds across Phoenix. The number of deaths would be in the 10,000-12,000 range.

Again, low likelihood event. But it immediately raises questions about what can we do to plan for this less than 1% likelihood event if it were to happen?

GILGER: And you think we should be planning for that, it sounds like.

GEORGESCU: I think absolutely we should be planning for this the way we plan for hurricane season, for example.

GILGER: Right. This is our hurricane.

Can Phoenix be the example for a warming world?

GILGER: So that brings me to my final question for each of you here, which is sort of about a counter-narrative that is possible and that I’ve seen written about and talked about a little bit. And you both are kind of touching on it here, which is that there is maybe a way of looking at this differently, a way of looking at the climate change future of the Valley of the Sun as an opportunity, I guess, as a chance for improvement, maybe as a model for the rest of the world, where it’s also getting hotter and they may be less prepared. Should we be thinking about it more like that?

STERN: I do think that Phoenix and Phoenicians can teach people how to deal with heat, because we have to deal with it every summer. and people that get out in the heat understand different ways and methods that you can use. I’m a jogger, and I love to hike the mountain preserves here all year long. But I don’t do it in the middle of the day when the solar radiation is going to just kill me.

GILGER: So thinking about it differently and using the day differently, right?

STERN: Exactly. We can cope with it. Humans actually live all over the world in very hot temperatures, and they have for hundreds and thousands of years. And they’ve also dealt with their water problems. So we can too.

GILGER: What do you think about this, Matt? Do you think there’s an alternative narrative here we’re missing?

GEORGESCU: Oh, absolutely. So we shouldn’t be randomly — and I’m not suggesting that we are randomly going about and letting time pass and seeing where the chips fall. But we should be designing our own futures. But until we ask the question “What is the desired outcome?”, we’re not in the position to design what our own future is.

Where do we want to be in the next 50 to 100 years, environmentally concerned? How do we want to source our energy. Do we want it to be local, or do we want to source it from somewhere else? I think Phoenix is doing great. You’ve got abundant sunshine throughout the year. I think we should be exporting this throughout the entire Western and perhaps even Eastern United States instead of exporting water to other portions of the world, as one example.

STERN: We need to do all those things because we have a desire to live here, and people have a desire to move here. That’s been the trend for decades now. And apparently it’s going to continue. That’s probably the number one issue to our sustainability. We have the technology, and there’s a history of being a leader in water conservation and heat response.

So as long as we continue to do the right things, then we can survive here even as it’s getting hotter. And we can also teach the rest of the country how to deal with heat, because they’re going to have that problem as well.

GEORGESCU: There’s a reason that, yes this is data from just two years ago. According to the U.S. Census, the fastest growing city in the United States — city, not metropolitan area — remains Phoenix. We need to be prepared for additional folks to come here. It’s happening.

So again, how do we work towards improved efficiency of energy and water distribution and thermal equity for those — Ray termed it as less than 2%. I think it’s that 2% that are actually pivotal in making sure that we safeguard those that cannot help themselves. Let’s enable and let’s empower them to help themselves. I think that that’s critical, and that’s a hallmark of a city that is truly sustainable.

STERN: We need to do a better job of making sure that the people that are vulnerable are taken care of. It’s a terrible way to die, obviously, and we don’t want to see that happen to anybody.

GEORGESCU: And it’s a terrible way to live.