Originally posted by beholder3 Many places on this earth suffer from badly dropping ground water levels, so excessive use of water feels actually like stealing from our kids and following generations. The accelerating climate change does its own to make this even worse in many areas. Water will be the gold of the future (as it already is in many poor regions).
"Excessive" water use isn't a problem in many cases and places for two reasons:
First, most "uses" of water in urban areas don't really consume any water, they only borrow the water for a few minutes. Washing machines, toilets, sinks, showers, bath tubs, etc. borrow water and return it for treatment. That borrowed water could get used dozens of times between when it fell as rain and when it washed down a river back to the ocean. (Rural septic systems probably return most of the water to the ground unless water-loving plants are growing in or around the leach field.) The biggest true users of water (and the larger problem both as a cause of dropping ground water levels and a downside effect) is agriculture. Too many people are trying to grow huge quantities of the wrong crops in the wrong places. That also includes gardens and lawns with plants ill-suited to the local climate. Also, evaporative cooling for power plants, buildings, and homes also "uses" water in the sense of evaporating it into the air rather than returning it (of course, evaporative cooling has a much lower carbon footprint than regular AC!)
Second, the other huge fact is that water is a local commodity (although the scale of "local" can span hundreds or thousands of miles because it is defined by watersheds). Excessive water use in one location really only affects that location and others downstream. There's no global shortage of water. The point is that no amount of "saving water" in the US or Europe is going to help India.