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In and of itself I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to reduce urban use just because it's not the chief contributor. It is not as though an outdo

In and of itself I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to reduce urban use just because it's not the chief contributor. It is not as though an outdoor water fountain on your patio or a lush green lawn in front of your house are equally valuable as agriculture.

adastra22 4y ago
Have you seen the water restrictions though? In San Jose you can get fined for washing your car on your driveway. Every car owner could was their car every day with a hose and water their lawns and it’d hardly make a dent in water allocation for just almond trees.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Because that's wasteful and also leads to all the detergents and grime going into roadways/public drains, right? I mean I agree that it's not going to match almond growing but that doesn't make it a bad idea.
  - lazide 4y ago
    It makes life much more irritating for large swathes of the population while making nary a dent in the putative reason for it.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      I can’t really empathize with the sense that not allowing driveway car washing makes life “much more irritating” and, even beside the water issue, the detergent and sludge just washing into the drains is a real concern. There’s a reason they don’t let the car wash do that.
      - lazide 4y ago
        Looking at the overall scheme of things, the things you mention get lost in the noise. People wash their cars anyway, they just don’t do it when the HOA president is watching or when the cops are looking. Or in San Jose, they don’t give a crap anyway since there is a giant homeless encampment half a block away, and human feces floating into the sewers anyway. It’s like bag bans - inconvenience, more junk, more cost, and for little to no actual improvement, coupled with feel good ‘look how much we’re helping’ propaganda. Also irritating. Are these major impediments to life? No. Are they lame? Yes. Do they accomplish what they putatively are for? No.
        emodendroket 4y ago
        Why have laws at all, since someone might break any of them?
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        lazide 4y ago
        Shades of gray of course. Murder? Of course it should be illegal. And society generally takes it seriously. Banning plastic bags - the cause of the month - or washing your car? Most of society is going to not give a rats ass, and it will undermine the rest of the system because of it. More laws don’t create less lawlessness. Laws which address, and give teeth to effective enforcement for, actual problems create less lawlessness.
        emodendroket 4y ago
        So laws are only worth having if everyone already agrees that the things they prohibit are very bad and they can't really change anything about what behavior people engage in? I think we have a lot of counterexamples, from litter to drunk driving to accessibility to discrimination. In my experience, appeals to laws being unenforceable are often made by people who just oppose the laws in the first place.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    It actually uses less water if you wash your car on your lawn and then skip running the sprinklers. Actually, it's usually less water, period. A commercial wash uses 25+ gallons, even with water recycling systems. I don't know about you, but I never used that much during a bucket wash.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      I'm not running sprinklers either. I have no idea how much I used when I did a home wash which is probably part of the issue.
avgcorrection 4y ago
In and of itself? No – having a lush garden or a green lawn is completely optional and serves no functional purpose. And yet the point is definitely (as already stated) to blame individual “lifestyle choices” (or household choices) and thus divert attention from how society operates overall. So is such a focus worth it? No, because the cost of the propaganda is far greater than the miniscule water gain.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I find this discussion tends to go in unsatisfying circles. Yes, any one person’s lifestyle choices are insignificant (well, unless you’re stratospherically wealthy at least). But fostering a shared sense that something needs to be done is not necessarily bad. Furthermore, farmers aren’t growing alfalfa just to gratify themselves but to support patterns of consumption we have come to expect.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    No. I’m not saying that the impact of one person’s lifestyle is miniscule in this context; I’m saying that it is miniscule in aggregate.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      I don’t see how that changes what I said.
kortilla 4y ago
> In and of itself I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to reduce urban use just because it's not the chief contributor. This is incorrect. It’s harmful because people have limited cycles to think about these things and having them focused on their own use is a great way to prevent the actual issue from getting fixed. A bunch of government rules on personal use gives the wrong impression that personal use is even relevant.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I don’t agree that making personal sacrifices, even small ones, generally makes people _less_ invested in an issue.

adastra22 4y ago

Have you seen the water restrictions though? In San Jose you can get fined for washing your car on your driveway. Every car owner could was their car every day with a hose and water their lawns and it’d hardly make a dent in water allocation for just almond trees.

emodendroket 4y ago
Because that's wasteful and also leads to all the detergents and grime going into roadways/public drains, right? I mean I agree that it's not going to match almond growing but that doesn't make it a bad idea.
- lazide 4y ago
  It makes life much more irritating for large swathes of the population while making nary a dent in the putative reason for it.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I can’t really empathize with the sense that not allowing driveway car washing makes life “much more irritating” and, even beside the water issue, the detergent and sludge just washing into the drains is a real concern. There’s a reason they don’t let the car wash do that.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Looking at the overall scheme of things, the things you mention get lost in the noise. People wash their cars anyway, they just don’t do it when the HOA president is watching or when the cops are looking. Or in San Jose, they don’t give a crap anyway since there is a giant homeless encampment half a block away, and human feces floating into the sewers anyway. It’s like bag bans - inconvenience, more junk, more cost, and for little to no actual improvement, coupled with feel good ‘look how much we’re helping’ propaganda. Also irritating. Are these major impediments to life? No. Are they lame? Yes. Do they accomplish what they putatively are for? No.
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        Why have laws at all, since someone might break any of them?
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        lazide 4y ago
        Shades of gray of course. Murder? Of course it should be illegal. And society generally takes it seriously. Banning plastic bags - the cause of the month - or washing your car? Most of society is going to not give a rats ass, and it will undermine the rest of the system because of it. More laws don’t create less lawlessness. Laws which address, and give teeth to effective enforcement for, actual problems create less lawlessness.
        emodendroket 4y ago
        So laws are only worth having if everyone already agrees that the things they prohibit are very bad and they can't really change anything about what behavior people engage in? I think we have a lot of counterexamples, from litter to drunk driving to accessibility to discrimination. In my experience, appeals to laws being unenforceable are often made by people who just oppose the laws in the first place.
- adastra22 4y ago
  It actually uses less water if you wash your car on your lawn and then skip running the sprinklers. Actually, it's usually less water, period. A commercial wash uses 25+ gallons, even with water recycling systems. I don't know about you, but I never used that much during a bucket wash.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I'm not running sprinklers either. I have no idea how much I used when I did a home wash which is probably part of the issue.

avgcorrection 4y ago

In and of itself? No – having a lush garden or a green lawn is completely optional and serves no functional purpose. And yet the point is definitely (as already stated) to blame individual “lifestyle choices” (or household choices) and thus divert attention from how society operates overall. So is such a focus worth it? No, because the cost of the propaganda is far greater than the miniscule water gain.

emodendroket 4y ago
I find this discussion tends to go in unsatisfying circles. Yes, any one person’s lifestyle choices are insignificant (well, unless you’re stratospherically wealthy at least). But fostering a shared sense that something needs to be done is not necessarily bad. Furthermore, farmers aren’t growing alfalfa just to gratify themselves but to support patterns of consumption we have come to expect.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  No. I’m not saying that the impact of one person’s lifestyle is miniscule in this context; I’m saying that it is miniscule in aggregate.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I don’t see how that changes what I said.

kortilla 4y ago

> In and of itself I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to reduce urban use just because it's not the chief contributor. This is incorrect. It’s harmful because people have limited cycles to think about these things and having them focused on their own use is a great way to prevent the actual issue from getting fixed. A bunch of government rules on personal use gives the wrong impression that personal use is even relevant.

emodendroket 4y ago
I don’t agree that making personal sacrifices, even small ones, generally makes people _less_ invested in an issue.