Water Wars

People who grow up/live in certain areas are trained from a young age that they should be careful with water use. This isn't actually a universal thing. Some areas have plenty of water, at least within some range of normal weather, and there isn't any reason to be careful with personal water use absent an untypical drought. Philadelphia's water company has said as much: use less to reduce your bill (though a big part of the bill isn't dependent on usage), but otherwise use as much as you want. There's plenty!

Still in most areas where water constraints are real, personal water use isn't the issue and people are suckers for thinking it is.

Of course, this one farm and the Saudi cows it feeds are not the sole reason Western water supplies are under pressure; most hay and alfalfa stays in the U.S. Yet they have helped highlight what’s driving water scarcity around the Colorado River—and it’s not the lawns that cities like Las Vegas are ordering people to dig up and remove or the almond milk in millennials’ coffee. In the 17 Western states, 7 percent of water is used in people’s homes according to a recent study in Nature; commercial and industrial use account for another 5 percent. But a whopping 86 percent of water is consumed by crop irrigation, including the 32 percent of water used to grow crops that humans don’t even eat directly, such as alfalfa, hay, and corn silage for livestock.