There's a difference between some people living in hard places supported by outside help, and whose ecosystem has had long durations to adapt, and many people seeing their normal weather change extremely quickly and their ecosystem stressed at incredible rates.
Just curious, Australia being mostly desert, if the rest of the planet became similarly barren, would it still work out? I don't know how food-independent Australia is...
With a maximum estimated population of a few millions living on 7 million square kilometers, that's not really a great path to follow for Earth's current 8 billion inhabitants sharing about 150 million square kilometers.
