By Ari Phillips

William deBuys is the author of seven books, including most recently “A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest,” for which I wrote a Dot Earth book review last month.

As part of my summer reporting project on energy and climate change in the Southwest, I had the pleasure of driving deep into the heart of the Santa Fe National Forest and interviewing deBuys at his home about an hour and a half from Santa Fe.

We discussed how he ended up in a far-removed mountain hamlet in New Mexico, what drove him to write his most recent book, and what the biggest takeaways from the project were, among other things.

When did climate change become a focus of your work?

I remember being in a conference in January 2006 in Albuquerque and climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck was giving a talk. He put a slide on the screen about predicted stream flow for the world. I realized this land that I love, the Southwest, is going to be transformed.

I always had this sort of abstract appreciation that it’s going to be hotter and that the climate is shifting and so forth. But seeing that map as a graphic drove it home. Something very very big was afoot. Something truly transformative. And in a sense it was sitting there looking at that map that planted the seed that later grew into “A Great Aridness.”

How did the book develop? How did you choose topics?

I had planned for a while back to write an environmental history of the Southwest. In my grant proposals I said I would write a general environmental history of the Southwest and use the perspective of climate change to organize it. I was fortunate enough to get a Guggenheim Fellowship and as soon as I began working on the book I realized I needed to flip it around – I needed to write about climate change in the Southwest and use the perspective of environmental history to try and understand it.

Were you surprised by your findings relating to ancient cultures and drought?

I’d been aware for some time of megadrought and the impact of drought on Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde culture. A primary thing I took away from the research was that drought isn’t the only big factor. One of main themes of the book is that nothing happens for just one reason. The collapse of the Sand Canyon culture was as much a result of warfare and strife as it was of drought. Warfare over resources, driven in part by refugees flooding the area probably as other regions suffered from climatic shifts.

Climate was a big driver but not the only driver. We’re not just puppets of climate; the things we do to ourselves count a lot too.

You say energy is the most unreported story in the looming water crisis of the Southwest.

Almost all the ways we have of producing electricity require a lot of water, with photovoltaic and wind being exceptions for the most part. Coal-fired thermal production is very water intensive, nuclear is very water intensive. At same time dealing with our water resources is very energy intensive. Well over a fifth of all electricity in United States is used for moving water around.

Anytime we start talking about meeting new energy needs in the Southwest that ups ante in terms of water availability. And anytime we talk about increasing water availability that increases the amount of energy we need to get water from where it is now to anywhere in the Southwest. The water resources we live next to are already being used to their fullest extent. So any increase in water resources has got to come from somewhere else, and that means a whole lot of electrical juice.

The feedbacks reinforce each other. The more water you need the more electricity you need the more water you need etc. It’s not a sustainable relationship. We’ve got to break that circle at some point with renewables and new ways of water budgeting.

I think in the end somehow we’re going to have to level off and maybe even shrink population in the region. As Edward abbey pointed out, continuous growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. How can we add four million people to the Tucson-Phoenix corridor? How can we add more people to Santa Fe and Albuquerque forever and ever and ever? There’s got to be a place that we stop. Read more

Former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), the man leading an initiative to revive Republican talks on climate solutions, predicted “there are a lot of Republicans in foxholes on this hill, ducking as the fire gets intense.” It looks like he is right.

Last week, reports of an informal, bipartisan meeting hosted by American Enterprise Institute on how to effectively price carbon pollution drew immediate fire from conservative groups:

• Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, a climate denial think tank: “Carbon dioxide is not a negative externality, it is a measure of energy use, and energy – as Julian Simon and others have pointed out – is the ‘master resource,’ the single most important input into our economy, the source of prosperity, innovation, and opportunity. The emerging consensus of scientists and economists is that CO2’s effects are either too small to be noticeable or will produce net benefits, not harms.
• National Review: “Disturbing reports are reaching us of a hitherto-secret meeting at the American Enterprise Institute Wednesday afternoon looking at the feasibility of persuading Congressional Republicans to back a “revenue neutral” carbon tax [...] Even if AEI was just providing the venue, one has to ask: What are they thinking?!
• Competitive Enterprise Institute, via Politico: “Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Marlo Lewis noted, ‘In general, when left and right join forces, the appropriate question is: Who is duping whom?’ He denounced the gathering as an ‘AEI-hosted carbon tax cabal.”I am impressed by the coordination,” added GOP energy and environmental strategist Mike McKenna in an email about Wednesday’s meeting. ‘That said, the specifics are ridiculously ugly — starting with $5 a gallon gas and going on from there.’”

Republican Congressional leaders have also come out strongly against a price on carbon. When asked about whether he would support a bipartisan dialogue around carbon pricing, Michael Steel, the spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), offered a simple “No.”  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office also said that the policy is off the table.

GOP icon George Schultz supports a carbon tax. Carbon pricing has bipartisan support from Democratic lamwakers Henry Waxman and Edward Markey and former GOP Representatives. Sherwood Boehlert and Wayne Gilchrest, who argued in an op-ed earlier this year that “no other policy would do as much for our economy, our security and our future as putting a price on carbon.” Inglis’ initiative also draws support from Mitt Romney’s top economic adviser Greg Mankiw, even though Romney continues to raise doubts about climate change.

The vitriolic reaction to AEI’s meeting illustrates the extreme ideological opposition to climate action among Republicans on the far right.