One massive problem I have with this framing is that environments are local, and California has a bad habit of exporting its local regulations to the rest of the world as if the rest of the world has the same local environmental issues that California has.
Water is scarce in the desert they've built the southwest on. So they should in fact save water, and it's pretty absurd shipping water across the country to grow it. Practically speaking, water isn't really a renewable resource in these locations given how the water gets there.
But the world isn't the southwestern US. In many places, water is a renewable resource, and a virtually endless one. In the southeast, the weather is humid and there's high rainfall. In fact, early on in American history, malaria was a huge issue in the southeast because the wet humid conditions are optimal for mosquitos.
So just as it would be absurd to enforce an air conditioner ban in Texas just because Alaska has no need for air conditioners, it would be absurd to enforce water conservation in Florida just because Nevada has water shortages.
Environmental stewardship isn't a blanket you can just lay over everyone the same and expect it to make the same sense. You need to do the work to figure out what your local environment needs, and what's going to be helpful and what's going to be hurtful. Historically speaking, environmental engineering efforts done naively have caused huge problems, including introducing invasive species into areas that didn't have them before, or wiping out species that were thought of as pests that turned out to be essential to the ecosystem.
Water is scarce in the desert they've built the southwest on. So they should in fact save water, and it's pretty absurd shipping water across the country to grow it. Practically speaking, water isn't really a renewable resource in these locations given how the water gets there.
But the world isn't the southwestern US. In many places, water is a renewable resource, and a virtually endless one. In the southeast, the weather is humid and there's high rainfall. In fact, early on in American history, malaria was a huge issue in the southeast because the wet humid conditions are optimal for mosquitos.
So just as it would be absurd to enforce an air conditioner ban in Texas just because Alaska has no need for air conditioners, it would be absurd to enforce water conservation in Florida just because Nevada has water shortages.
Environmental stewardship isn't a blanket you can just lay over everyone the same and expect it to make the same sense. You need to do the work to figure out what your local environment needs, and what's going to be helpful and what's going to be hurtful. Historically speaking, environmental engineering efforts done naively have caused huge problems, including introducing invasive species into areas that didn't have them before, or wiping out species that were thought of as pests that turned out to be essential to the ecosystem.
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