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The hair-shirt environmentalism of laws like "restaurants can only serve you water if you ask" is... it's really kind of appalling. It's like if you came into

The hair-shirt environmentalism of laws like "restaurants can only serve you water if you ask" is... it's really kind of appalling. It's like if you came into an emergency room with one of your arms literally torn off your body and they wouldn't, you know, triage you, but instead sent you to talk to a doctor about how you're ten pounds overweight and how you really need to lose that weight or else god think of the negative health consequences.

mhurron 12y ago
I liked the example given when cutting PBS out of the national budget was put forward as an idea - "It's like trying to lose weight by cutting your fingernails." Basically you see who has the power around. Clearly water saving needs to occur, but no one is going to suggest that it's the farmers who use the majority of it cut back.
smokey_the_bear 12y ago
It's beyond ridiculous, are they really wanting us to believe that we are in a position where we should be rationing how much water we drink? If that were the case, I would definitely be moving as soon as possible.
- deserted 12y ago
  I think the reasoning goes that water is wasted when customers don't really want the restaurant provided water. Whatever is left in the glass gets poured down the drain, then the glasses get washed. Making people actually request water eliminates some waste. But as this article shows, this is inane. The amount of water wasted by customers of all restaurants in California is probably less than the water used to grow a few acres of almonds.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  No, it's a way of saying to the farmers 'look, people in cities are doing their part, now stop trying to deflect responsibility.'
  - Crito 12y ago
    No, it is a way of telling people in cities "This is all your fault, so stop giving farmers a hard time."
azakai 12y ago
That isn't instead. It's in addition. Anyone saying that we need to only save water at restaurants is clearly wrong. Anyone saying that we mostly need to save water at restaurants is also wrong. But we could save water at restaurants, as a minor help to the other more major things we could be doing. It's still worth doing.
- stouset 12y ago
  It's really probably not, is the thing. "Any little bit helps" just isn't true when you consider the relative scale. One glass of water per resident per day is something like a thousandth of the per-capita water usage state-wide, which itself is dwarfed by agricultural and landscape use. This is utterly pointless.
  - azakai 12y ago
    It's true that one glass of water for lunch is almost negligible. But residents do account for 20% of total water use, and it's been shown in various countries that residents can reduce their water consumption significantly, by a mixture of efforts. Any reduction in that 20% would help the bottom line, and it would come from a combination of little things, including not wasting water at lunch. I'm not saying we should focus on those things. We as a society should focus on the 80%. But for most of us, we can only directly influence residential water usage, that's why you notice it at restaurants and so forth. You and I wouldn't notice when e.g. a farmer switches to drip irrigation to save water. Again, the 80% matters more than 20%. But cuts in the 20% are a good thing too.
    - aetherson 12y ago
      Residential isn't 20%, it's 14%. 6% is commercial/industrial. And glasses of water in restaurants are probably counted in the 6%, not the 14%. And even of the commercial/industrial usage, how much can glasses of water possibly be? Surely not even 5% of that usage. So if we reduce consumption of glasses of water at restaurants, by, say, 80%, we've done what? Lowered total usage of water by 0.24%? My sense is that that's a hugely optimistic amount.
SoftwareMaven 12y ago
This is the same reason I have a difficult time really worrying about waste production and energy use in my household[1]. Residential energy use amounts to between 10 and 15% of US energy use[2]; from what I remember, waste is about the same or less. 1. This is not to say I don't practice waste reduction and energy conservation; just that I don't stress if something slips through the cracks. 2. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/early_consumption.cfm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/early_consumption.cfm
- SilasX 12y ago
  This is actually typical of conservation policies. We freak out over disposable bags and mandate a 10 cent charge for them, even though industrial users could reduce a lot more waste for ten cents. We ban incandescent light bulbs, irrespective of how much additional tax anyone would be willing to pay to buy one. We ban high flow shower heads, while placing no restrictions on how much water you draw for your lawn. It's like one big social experiment to see how inefficient and value destructive the policies can get before people finally balk.
  - ghouse 12y ago
    Disposable bag ban wasn't because of a reduction of waste, but a proliferation of trash. We (pretty much all governments world wide) subsidize electricity, so consumers don't see a complete price signal and thus are less sensitive to less efficient lightbulbs. We subsidize water, and then place restrictions on it's use. Without the subsidy, the restriction wouldn't be necessary -- the market would sort it out.
    - SilasX 12y ago
      That's exactly what I'm criticizing: these policies get the incentives all wrong and destroy socially beneficial improvements. Why restrict use type X when you're just going let people blow as much as they want on use type Y? (Like restricting showers but not lawns/farms or bags but not candy wrappers.) If you want to subsidize a utility, subsidize the first N units per person and let the rest be full price; then you wouldn't have to play whack-a-mole with every possible wasteful use. And why restrict the use of something (like bulbs) when people are willing to pay more than the magnitude of the externality? While incandescent bulbs may be bad, they're not infinitely bad. This policy destroys all value that could be created by people's willingness to pay net of the environmental cost. Why argue that it makes sense? None of it makes sense, even and especially on environmental grounds.
mc32 12y ago
That silliness has more to do with raising awareness and being a reminder than actually something which actually conserves water --simply it's symbolic
- aetherson 12y ago
  But it's not symbolic, it's distracting. It focuses limited public attention on doing something that's mildly personally inconvenient instead of actually effective.
  - baddox 12y ago
    It also strongly implies that everyday human water usage is a significant portion of water usage, which it isn't. For people who aren't educated about the California water situation, it's likely "raising awareness" of falsities.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    But if you get enough public attention it can snowball into actually changing what matters. You tell everyone to think about the almond trees and it's so far disconnected that they tend to forget about it. If it's the third restaurant visit this month they had to ask for water, then they're going to be more accepting of policy to save water with the farmers (i.e. do their part).
    - hueving 12y ago
      >then they're going to be more accepting of policy to save water with the farmers The policies are just saying that normal consumers have to save though. People would be plenty accepting of a policy that just said farmers have to cut back. There is no reason for shared sacrifice here. The small users (normal people) already pay a fair price. The elephants are the ones screwing everyone and we are wasting time discussing how the minority can cut back more. It's stupid.
- SilasX 12y ago
  I have never seen a notification card for these policies that suggested it was symbolic; they all make it sound like a legit attempt at conserving water. Do you have an example of one consistent with your interpretation of the policy?
thrownaway2424 12y ago
You don't compare the relative scale of a glass of water and all the almonds in Fresno County because the water isn't fungible. You could stop growing almonds all over California right now and that isn't going to put any more water into Hetch Hetchy for drinking by San Franciscans.

mhurron 12y ago

I liked the example given when cutting PBS out of the national budget was put forward as an idea - "It's like trying to lose weight by cutting your fingernails." Basically you see who has the power around. Clearly water saving needs to occur, but no one is going to suggest that it's the farmers who use the majority of it cut back.

smokey_the_bear 12y ago

It's beyond ridiculous, are they really wanting us to believe that we are in a position where we should be rationing how much water we drink? If that were the case, I would definitely be moving as soon as possible.

deserted 12y ago
I think the reasoning goes that water is wasted when customers don't really want the restaurant provided water. Whatever is left in the glass gets poured down the drain, then the glasses get washed. Making people actually request water eliminates some waste. But as this article shows, this is inane. The amount of water wasted by customers of all restaurants in California is probably less than the water used to grow a few acres of almonds.
anigbrowl 12y ago
No, it's a way of saying to the farmers 'look, people in cities are doing their part, now stop trying to deflect responsibility.'
- Crito 12y ago
  No, it is a way of telling people in cities "This is all your fault, so stop giving farmers a hard time."

azakai 12y ago

That isn't instead. It's in addition. Anyone saying that we need to only save water at restaurants is clearly wrong. Anyone saying that we mostly need to save water at restaurants is also wrong. But we could save water at restaurants, as a minor help to the other more major things we could be doing. It's still worth doing.

stouset 12y ago
It's really probably not, is the thing. "Any little bit helps" just isn't true when you consider the relative scale. One glass of water per resident per day is something like a thousandth of the per-capita water usage state-wide, which itself is dwarfed by agricultural and landscape use. This is utterly pointless.
- azakai 12y ago
  It's true that one glass of water for lunch is almost negligible. But residents do account for 20% of total water use, and it's been shown in various countries that residents can reduce their water consumption significantly, by a mixture of efforts. Any reduction in that 20% would help the bottom line, and it would come from a combination of little things, including not wasting water at lunch. I'm not saying we should focus on those things. We as a society should focus on the 80%. But for most of us, we can only directly influence residential water usage, that's why you notice it at restaurants and so forth. You and I wouldn't notice when e.g. a farmer switches to drip irrigation to save water. Again, the 80% matters more than 20%. But cuts in the 20% are a good thing too.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    Residential isn't 20%, it's 14%. 6% is commercial/industrial. And glasses of water in restaurants are probably counted in the 6%, not the 14%. And even of the commercial/industrial usage, how much can glasses of water possibly be? Surely not even 5% of that usage. So if we reduce consumption of glasses of water at restaurants, by, say, 80%, we've done what? Lowered total usage of water by 0.24%? My sense is that that's a hugely optimistic amount.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago

This is the same reason I have a difficult time really worrying about waste production and energy use in my household[1]. Residential energy use amounts to between 10 and 15% of US energy use[2]; from what I remember, waste is about the same or less. 1. This is not to say I don't practice waste reduction and energy conservation; just that I don't stress if something slips through the cracks. 2. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/early_consumption.cfm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/early_consumption.cfm

SilasX 12y ago
This is actually typical of conservation policies. We freak out over disposable bags and mandate a 10 cent charge for them, even though industrial users could reduce a lot more waste for ten cents. We ban incandescent light bulbs, irrespective of how much additional tax anyone would be willing to pay to buy one. We ban high flow shower heads, while placing no restrictions on how much water you draw for your lawn. It's like one big social experiment to see how inefficient and value destructive the policies can get before people finally balk.
- ghouse 12y ago
  Disposable bag ban wasn't because of a reduction of waste, but a proliferation of trash. We (pretty much all governments world wide) subsidize electricity, so consumers don't see a complete price signal and thus are less sensitive to less efficient lightbulbs. We subsidize water, and then place restrictions on it's use. Without the subsidy, the restriction wouldn't be necessary -- the market would sort it out.
  - SilasX 12y ago
    That's exactly what I'm criticizing: these policies get the incentives all wrong and destroy socially beneficial improvements. Why restrict use type X when you're just going let people blow as much as they want on use type Y? (Like restricting showers but not lawns/farms or bags but not candy wrappers.) If you want to subsidize a utility, subsidize the first N units per person and let the rest be full price; then you wouldn't have to play whack-a-mole with every possible wasteful use. And why restrict the use of something (like bulbs) when people are willing to pay more than the magnitude of the externality? While incandescent bulbs may be bad, they're not infinitely bad. This policy destroys all value that could be created by people's willingness to pay net of the environmental cost. Why argue that it makes sense? None of it makes sense, even and especially on environmental grounds.

mc32 12y ago

That silliness has more to do with raising awareness and being a reminder than actually something which actually conserves water --simply it's symbolic

aetherson 12y ago
But it's not symbolic, it's distracting. It focuses limited public attention on doing something that's mildly personally inconvenient instead of actually effective.
- baddox 12y ago
  It also strongly implies that everyday human water usage is a significant portion of water usage, which it isn't. For people who aren't educated about the California water situation, it's likely "raising awareness" of falsities.
- bduerst 12y ago
  But if you get enough public attention it can snowball into actually changing what matters. You tell everyone to think about the almond trees and it's so far disconnected that they tend to forget about it. If it's the third restaurant visit this month they had to ask for water, then they're going to be more accepting of policy to save water with the farmers (i.e. do their part).
  - hueving 12y ago
    >then they're going to be more accepting of policy to save water with the farmers The policies are just saying that normal consumers have to save though. People would be plenty accepting of a policy that just said farmers have to cut back. There is no reason for shared sacrifice here. The small users (normal people) already pay a fair price. The elephants are the ones screwing everyone and we are wasting time discussing how the minority can cut back more. It's stupid.
SilasX 12y ago
I have never seen a notification card for these policies that suggested it was symbolic; they all make it sound like a legit attempt at conserving water. Do you have an example of one consistent with your interpretation of the policy?

thrownaway2424 12y ago

You don't compare the relative scale of a glass of water and all the almonds in Fresno County because the water isn't fungible. You could stop growing almonds all over California right now and that isn't going to put any more water into Hetch Hetchy for drinking by San Franciscans.