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Comment by oliwarner | Hacker News Reader

> is not the issue

I think this is the biggest issue with every resource and climate issue right now. As soon as you point out something significant, somebody pops up with "But that's not the real issue", and points to another three.

US domestic, residential resource usage (water, raw energy, fossil fuel) is so amazingly out of whack with the rest of the world that it's starting to demoralise the rest of us.

This is a problem that can be fixed but it won't if you just want to point at other problems.

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How many countries successfully built highway systems by leaving the construction of them to private people? How about rail systems? Because a national water grid is closer to a power grid or highway system ie fundamental, critical, and national infrastructure than something even an hoa could pull off.

These “arguments” for “personal responsibility” are increasingly shallow. The rhetorical equivalent of grabbing someones whole arm, forcing that arm to hit themselves, and asking “why are you hitting yourself? You’re so silly!” Ie abuse.

Where did I argue for personal responsibility or privately built infrastructure? Are you replying to the right comment?

The US needs to take national responsibility for energy consumption and water use. From agriculture to residential and everything in between. That will involve a lot of Federal and state funded infrastructure but also a lot of subsidised home improvement, and tax. The whole US needs to take this seriously, we all do.

Just to reiterate, I'm not saying we should ignore any of the issues you talked about; rather it's your approach of ignoring domestic because of argri that I think sends the wrong message to everyone.

I agree there is a frustrating tendency to get into deflecting blame and pointing at different things, the situation with water is perhaps not a great example.

If you focus on household water usage, you'll have many people oppose your effort because they don't want to take shorter showers or buy a new washing machine. If you point out that some corporation is paying pennies to drain an aquifer to grow a water-intensive crop like almonds in the desert, it's easier to get the political base to affect real change.

Basically, you can try to get the majority of people to choose the greater societal good over their own comfort and convenience (good luck, humans suck) or you can try to convince enough of them to not let the almond farmers continue pillaging the shared water supply, which feels more politically viable.

This works both ways.

If you mandate low flow (eg 6l/minute, half regular showers) via building code, and strengthen water efficiency standards for appliances, make company licensing factor in energy and water usage, and in tougher times, enforce hosepipe and sprinkler bans, private pools, etc... then it makes it a lot easier to lean on agri.

There might be a strong enough argument for prioritising agriculture, but that's only something you can start to appreciate once you appreciate the cost of water, which you can't if your only experience is that it's limitless at every point of use.

The problem is not agriculture per se, but the inefficient way it uses water due to the perverse incentives of California's water rights system. They could get the same output for way less water using drip irrigation, but that costs more than simply flooding with water. The first step is to abolish senior rights, the second is to remove subsidies so all users pay the same rate at actual cost.

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