We really, really need to stop growing lawn grass as a region.
A part of the grass thing I think is the fairly recent desire to have a pure Fescue/Bermuda/etc grass lawn.
I don't remember why, but a few months ago it popped into my head: You know, when I was a kid in Harlingen, there was clover everywhere. We'd pick a bit out of lawns as we roamed the neighborhood and chew on it. It's been decades since I've seen a neighborhood like that...
So I bought some clover seed and spread it around. Within just a couple weeks (4 or 5 days of daily watering at the outset to establish it) it was crazy green, spread through most of the lawn, while not being disruptive to the grass. The grass actually seems to be benefitting. It is chocking out weeds OTOH, so win win win. Overall my lawn is a whole lot brighter/greener/more-alive and it doesn't take more than the twice weekly watering schedule allowed by DFW's water conservation ordinances.
Now at the height of summer my lawn looks better than most of my neighbors and unlike the retirees' manicured lawns I'm not out there watering with a hose (a loophole the water conservation ordinance allows to please the demographic) daily.
I just thought it was noteworthy that there's a middle-ground between green painted gravel like Sun City, AZ, and golf-course lawns.
Clover was not considered a weed until the 1950s, when 2,4-D became the herbicide of choice.
Before then, seed companies intentionally added clover into their grass seed mixes. Clover will grow in nitrogen-deficient soil because it can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. Grass cannot. If you wanted to avoid bare patches on your lawn, you needed the clover.
For example, the book Planting and Care of Lawns (1931) recommends planting lawns north of 35 N latitude with a mixture containing 5% clover: http://books.google.com/books?id=_vL1mNCfVDAC&pg=PA8
For the greater part of region 1 the following mixture
has proved quite satisfactory: Kentucky bluegrass 17 parts,
redtop 2 parts, white clover 1 part by weight.
Are you sure that's a loophole? I've seen statistics that hand watering and drip irrigation systems are much less wasteful than sprinklers. And sprinklers are the only thing that are banned to twice-weekly in my region of DFW at least.
I wouldn't argue your overall point, but my point is that it's not like those neighbors don't run their sprinkler systems. They're supplementing with hand watering. Not substituting.
And who has time for that except empty-nesters?
Don't get me wrong. I love my neighbors. Living in the city has been an entirely different experience for me coming from the suburbs. There's an actual feeling of community here I never experienced out there.
Maybe it's unfair, but I just expect City Hall would have a hard time going to usage based billing instead.
Agriculture uses 77% of all water in California. Residential is less than 14%, with half of that being indoor use.
I am all in favor of low water gardening, but you are not going to save us from the drought by getting rid of lawns.
That's why you replace the lawns with zero-maintenance[1] food forests.
Water? Rainwater irrigates the garden, suburbs having an abundance of 100% runoff surfaces like streets, roofs, etc that are usually mismanaged. Reforestation is critical, since ~80% of inland rainfall comes from transpiration.[2]
In deserts (read: much of California), minimizing evaporation is key. You also need to harvest the infrequent (and torrential) rains that do happen. If you have a floods followed months later by droughts, that should tell you that your water system isn't set up correctly. ;)
Global warming? How about instead of driving to the supermarket, having the produce section is right outside your door? Since an acre of farm-land is now CO2 positive, this is a big win.
Fertilizer? Municipal-scale composting of human wastes[3] can safely close the nutrient cycle. In a zero-maintenance system the "weeds" build soil, fix nitrogen, eat minerals, and attract support species like pest-eaters and pollinators (which are really "seed spreaders", since they let the plants re-seed themselves).
One challenge is that zero-maintenance food systems can look "messy" to the suburban eye
[1] Do you have time to tend a garden?
[2] http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~jjgibson/mypdfs/nature11983...
[3] e.g. http://www.milorganite.com/Using-Milorganite/What-is-It
If water for agriculture were not so heavily subsidized by taxpayers, the market would likely correct the shortage fairly quickly with changes in diet (which arguably might have some health benefits as well).
http://www.publiclandsranching.org/htmlres/wr_guzzling_water...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-pla...
I would love it if I could just throw a bunch of gravel down around my house and never have to worry about mowing again...
Developing a mature, drought tolerant landscape is difficult though there are some really interesting techniques used by permaculturists and others.