Again, you completely misunderstood my position. I'm not making a comment on deserts, or this deserts specifically.
I'm making the following comment: "it seems to me that certain people (which I've just learned includes you) seem to believe that any change to any environment is necessarily bad"
We have very little ability to gauge the true impact of environmental changes so far we've learned that for the most part any manmade or man accelerated change has in the long run an adverse effect on humans and the planet as a whole.
There is no conflict between humans being the geoengineers they are trying to stop adverse changes to their global habitat that can threaten them, while wanting to preserve natural habitats that serve as a home to countless other species.
Most people think nature is pretty nice, and well pretty pretty, screwing it over needlessly especially considering that every time we do it gets worse for us is what most of us by now came to define as "bad" because it has a negative effect on our civilization.
On the other hand if you say make an argument that we found the cure for cancer but to make it we need to harvest every blue belly turtle in the planet and cause the species to go pretty much extinct I don't think many people including me would have much of a moral objection to it since while I do feel bad for the blue belly turtle (I made this species up, it might exist but i don't know :)) the positive effect on human civilization is most likely going to outweigh any negative effects the extinction of this turtle will have on the environment.
You seem to be writing your responses as if I were claiming that "it's ok to trash the environment", or something, which is not true (see my other comments in this thread).
Anyway, I'm bored, sorry.
Israel was trying to fight the creeping dunes for decades, it finally figured out that actually trying to convert them into arable land early own was one of the causes that increase desertification, once it realized that it adjusted its policies and now keeping arid and semi-arid regions and building "natural" barriers that prevent the dunes from creeping is its main environmental policy and so far it's been working as the dunes have been receding by as much as 2 meters per year.
But the general argument isn't for "pro-desertification" it's just against unnecessary environmental change, Okanagan is not a desert it's a pretty good arable valley overall wanting to preserve the natural habitat and not fill it with vineyards isn't really a hard argument to make.
You can say that we can and should screw over every piece of land to get everything we can from it, but most of us can agree that we should preserve what we have left and find ways to better exploit in less destructive means the land we've already taken over and if at all possible try to reverse some of the damage we have caused.
I'm really trying to understand why would you think just stripping and entire habitat and doing pretty much nothing with it is somehow useful just so you could grow a few grapes in Canada.