Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet

What's the point you are making?

It sounds like your saying that there have been droughts in the past that repeatedly uprooted and changed entire cultures lives and history.

Right now we're going to be facing even more severly droughts due to climate change that will very likely impact far more people far more severely.

So you're correct: when this happened in the past simply do to natural variation in the region in caused incredible hardship on the residents of the region.

Now we're experience this from factors changing the environment on a much larger and more aggressive scale, so it will likely be even more devastating the the past.

> hey lived without most of the trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization, like fire, clothing, or agriculture.

While some of the native populations of the region where nomadic groups and likely didn't have agriculture, they all had fire and clothing. In addition there were plenty of agricultural civilizations in the region.

Even if it were possible, it wouldn't be the Pacific coast anymore after you were done.

Meanwhile in Chile, we are losing in a year what we used to lose a decade of water drought in Santiago. The government has a plan to ration water consumption if it gets worse.

Mountains are less green than they used to be.

> Those that lived in the area throughout that time (like my own ancestors) left almost no history for obvious reasons,

Humans have lived in the basin where I live for at least 4000 years, and many parts of it are filled with thousands of bits of their pottery as evidence of their presence. I suspect that the Tewa/Pueblo people in general would be a little troubled by the idea that they "left almost no history" behind. I'm not sure what you think the "obvious reasons" would be for this, were it to be true?

> but it's pretty sure that they lived without most of the trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization, like fire, clothing, or agriculture.

Your assumption is incorrect. The US southwest, like other parts of north America, has been home to human civilizations for thousands of years. The meant civilizations with technologies, art, trade, travel and certainly "fire, clothing and agriculture". Chaco Canyon in NW New Mexico was at one time a basically urban center that functioned as the area hub of a trading route that stretched from south of what is now Mexico City up into Utah, and was likely home to thousands of people living in permanent dwellings.

What is true is that the populations were generally small compared to modern American cities in the region, and would have tended to concentrate in areas with year-round surface water flow. Because of the lack of access to groundwater (as we have today, perhaps at a our long term peril), when the decades-long droughts hit (e.g. in the late 1400s) many of these populations had no choice but to move.

It's the next big crisis like the incoming ice age, global warming, climate change, covid, etc. etc. It'll never be solved. Especially when you think California has a ton of water up north but yet needs to drain the Colorado River. And nobody wants to take water from the ocean. Or run a pipeline from the east to the west. Or pass laws requiring low-flow showerheads. Lots of states in the west have full on shower heads in hotels. What a big scam. Downvote me now, you all in on the jig.