saw those built in places like ancient city center of Yazd, they sure had the heating/cooling figured out. even saw a photo of ice storage building (looked a bit older). I mean, storing ice in the middle of the desert.
no wonder persians were called 'educated arabs' in the past.
Or there's solar powered aircon https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/wall-split-type-Energ...
Ancient Iranian architecture was quite close to that, which you may be alluding to: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Architecture/wind.htm
What people will do? Well, same as everywhere else, everything from agriculture to software. It's more a question of how many of them the local agriculture can support. The number of people who've fled Syria is more than its entire population was in 1950. Similar applies to places like Yemen. Malthusianism may not apply globally, but it can certainly bite locally.