Apocalypse Now: Phoenix Edition
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” ―Dante Alighieri
Word to everything, I never felt anything like it, not a single analogue in all my days on earth: the intense shift in temperature that happened when I walked out of a well air-conditioned terminal at Sky Harbor Airport into the sweltering, stifling, car-fumed inferno of Phoenix. It was flagrance that slapped my face like an open palm. Heat that felt extraterrestrial or at least dystopic. Heat that was itself an unwelcoming. Just how hot was it? On the real, I never checked, but I didn’t have to, for my brief empirical research confirmed it was dangerous, dangerous, mortal.
That was last Sunday, a day when Phoenix reached 115 degrees. For those of you who love statistics, that was the seventeenth day that Phoenix recorded a temperature of 110 or more. A week ago, the Valley of the Sun achieved the troubling and ultra-portentous distinction of most consecutive days (19) of 110 degrees or more, a record that had stood since 1974.
We are now at 25 days (and counting)!
As with damn near every problem affecting the masses, poor people, and in particular those who are unhoused, are most at risk. In 2021 alone, there were 338 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix and other parts of South-Central AZ) and of those people, 42 percent were unhoused.
The problem is so dire that in 2021 Phoenix created a first-of-its kind department focused on providing heat respite: the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation (OHRM). There’s also several volunteer programs and social agencies, plus—thank goodness—no few Samaritans out doing their part to keep people from baking to death.
Have you ever felt this kind of heat? Ye uninitiated please see below, but first let me put to rest the tired argument—far as I’m concerned, the heat index is a nonfactor—of it being “dry.” Okay, here you go: There ain’t no kids frolicking on park playgrounds or chasing down an ice cream truck in their neighborhood during these triple-digit atrocities. In this type of heat, there’s no such thing as the halcyon bike-rides or walks I’ve enjoyed living in other cities. This heat is the sort that has turned my leather seats (I’d refused to get tint) to a skillet, that has given me sunburn while running errands inside my car. Ibullshityounot, this heat has sent people who’ve passed out on the sidewalk to the hospital with second-degree burns.
And do you know what one needs maybe most of all in such severe conditions?
Water!
And do you know what might be Arizona’s most insecure natural resource?
Water!
The Colorado River provides more than a third of Arizona’s water and, thanks to a climate-change–induced megadrought spanning two decades, the river levels have been reduced, making the state more and more reliant on pumping groundwater, which at present comprises about 40 percent of its usage. To address this crisis on a broad level, there are big-buck proposals to build pipelines from other states, as well as the world’s largest salination plant in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. Other measures include municipal restrictions on water usage and the state restricting homebuilding in Phoenix.
About that homebuilding. You’d think the torridity and water shortage would discourage people from moving to AZ, but au contraire mon frère. Per the last census, Arizona boasted four of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the country. What does that look like in real life? Put it like this: For months after I moved to Phoenix in the summer of 2021, I’d go to see a house one day and call my agent the very next day to make an offer, only to find out that someone had submitted an offer overnight. To find out another time that someone had not only put in an offer but added an escalation. To discover another time that someone had waived an inspection or contingencies. To be gobsmacked by news that someone had ponied up an all-cash purchase (where the hell do these people come from?). Around the place foolish, silly me bought at the top of that ultimate seller’s market there’s still new construction everywhichway I turn.
Is it me or does a simultaneous heat wave/water shortage/booming housing market sound like the imaginings of the dude who wrote the Inferno? Is it me or do all of them present a moral-ethnical quandary not just for people who run this state and its counties and cities, but for all who reside here?
As I see it, the heart of that dilemma is the ethos of economic-growth-is-eternal-so-keep-building-and-consuming-cabron-footprint-be-damned intersecting with the ethos of innovation-or-infrastructure-will-save-us all, which is also to say late-stage capitalism is most responsible for turning Phoenix into a harbinger of the apocalypse.
This is not news for those credulous about our planet’s peril. But what I hope is treated as important is that, as I write, it’s evening in this valley and still 115 degrees; what I hope commands serious attention is that there are more days forecasted of this mournful record-breaking calefaction, not to mention the absence of single drop of rain till next week (and even that prediction is slight).
Maybe you’re an undercover misanthrope who cares not for what planet you bequeath posterity. Maybe you’ve got a luxury bunker in New Zealand or rocketship all gassed up for the moon. Perhaps you’ve got plans to martyr yourself on a scorching sidewalk. For everybody else, even those fortunate enough to live in cities ranked high for their climate resilience, let my words remind you of the precarious interdependence of our natural resources, of the impending prospect of climate refugees fleeing to where you call home, of once habitable places deteriorating to otherwise.
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