Eh, I think some of these are circumstantial. The dating one probably applies to a very specific type of person. This is the one that does it for me:

Why are even some affluent parts of the world running out of fresh water? Because if they weren’t, they’d keep watering their lawns until they were.

It's all about greed/constraints/pressures/incentives/desires. People want to use water, but people don't have an incentive to keep water use down. Instead, they put pressure on engineers to bring availability up. And when availability, or supply, goes up, demand comes back in to seal the gap.