Attention Natalie Stoclet! Your use of water in the U.S. does not “affect the water crisis” in Cape Town, South Africa. The real reason that Cape Town has a “water crisis” is because it chose to reject Israel’s offer of help to build desalination plants.

Wordpress ^ | March 3, 2020 | Dan from Squirrel Hill

[bkopto]

Bottom line, the people in charge cant find their own asses with two hands and a map

This was my point, ENTIRELY.

Desalination plants in SA make no sense at all when the folks running the show can never maintain what they cannot build, to begin with.

SA is reverting to a primitive society. One doesn't have to be from SA to understand that and why its happening.

[buffyt]

I was born in 1951 and my folks said there are people all over the world who are starving, they never singled out China. Grew up in N E Okla. They were both survivors of WWII and the Great Depression. They didn’t waste food!

[BwanaNdege]

This is like the various states which prohibit rainwater harvesting, i.e., catching water running off your roof into barrels for domestic use.

If you do NOT ‘harvest’ your rainwater, it runs into the ground, recharging the aquifer. If you DO ‘harvest’ your rainwater, then use it for domestic purposes, it runs down your plumbing drains.

If you have a septic tank, it then runs through that, out your leach field and into the groundwater/aquifer.

If you are attached to a municipal sewer system, it runs through that to the wastewater treatment plant and into the nearest river, lake or ocean, eventually rejoining all the raindrops which were NOT ‘harvested’.

The only way ‘rainwater harvesting’ affects the local water balance is if you catch the rain running off your roof in barrels and then send those barrels to the Gobi Desert or some other needy region far away from your home watershed.

[samtheman]

My parents also WWII and depression. I don’t remember that wasting food was a particularly venal sin in their eyes, though I do remember my father was quite vocal on the subject of not wasting money.

My wife’s mother was death on not wasting food. She was born in China in mid-thirties and lived through Japanese occupation, Mao revolution, Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.

Some of that rubbed off on my wife who has a hard time throwing food away. I unburden her by doing it myself. I personally believe in a coming post-scarcity future and some stale leftovers now and then get no sympathy from me.