California needs to be mindful of the drought status

One of the biggest misconceptions made within our community concerning our water usage tends to be the celebration that drought status is revoked whenever rain falls. In turn, people begin to make poor decisions in terms of their water usage and carelessly waste water. The gravity of this issue does not just fall within our community but as a global problem. After heavy rainfall, a majority of the community sees the grass turn green and immediately assumes they can go back to using large amounts of water to wash their cars, take unnecessarily long showers and other generally careless acts.

When thinking about climate change, often the first thing that comes to mind is the melting of glaciers and widespread fires but the issue is much larger than that. Majority of climate change deals with the crisis surrounding sustainable water. Globally, the growing demand for water increases the need for energy-intensive water pumping and transportation. Water-intensive agriculture for food production, particularly meat, and for growing crops used as biofuels, can further exacerbate water scarcity in certain regions.

As a result, a vicious cycle is created where the community attempts to reduce their water usage by ten-fold, only to overuse and waste more water once the rainy season rolls around. Consequently, we go right back to where we started, reducing our water usage so much that all our lawns and gardens die. We must stop excusing our irresponsibility by relying on the lack of rainfall and instead responsibly conserve our water supply. The issue is not the lack of rainfall but rather