I’m not sure your dismissal of “saving water” makes sense, or rather, your dismissal would apply just as well to any situation where one’s personal use of water will not directly cause a shortage of water for someone else.

The whole point of recommending people to save water isn’t that one’s own water conservation will directly cause a measurable re-allocation of water to someone else. It’s more akin to moral advice, something like “act in a way that would have good outcomes if everyone acted that way.” I suppose it’s okay to explicitly dismiss all moral recommendations of that form, but it’s worth noting that this form is extremely common and not something I would call “strange.” It’s basically the same moral recommendation as “don’t butt in line even if no one is going to stop you.”

To map that idea directly onto your situation, I guess it would be something like “if 10 million people moved to the vicinity of your small river, there probably would be a water shortage that would require everyone to be conscientious about their water usage.”

If people moved there would be reason to save water and then I would be doing it

See, there is already a lot of stuff to worry about in life. If you can act on a hypothetical problem, why not redirect your effort to an actual one for some real world benefits?

Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous but so is saving water when there is no benefit from it.

> Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous

I'll bite - it doesn't sound ridiculous because it is highly likely that there is going to be power hungry air conditioning equipment in use. I think it's an example of an unfortunate phenomenon where if you deviate from the accepted cargo cult practices you run the risk of missing some detail and making things worse, at which point you get the blame, but conversely you don't get the credit for doing things better than average. In fact it's likely there is a peanut gallery just waiting for you to make a mistake so they can punish you for being a renegade.

Sorry, I just can't parse your argument.

Some places have no need for heating or cooling. Like my rental in Santa Barbara.

Where would that line be though? Would you never consider reducing your water usage by a liter per day until there was literally someone near to you that was dying of thirst who you could directly give the liter of water to?

That's a harmful way of thinking. That's the kind of rationale that shames fat people for leaving food from single-sized meals because somebody far away lacks it, for example.

The GP saving water would have no impact at all on the people that miss it. It's not a "do your small part", it's simply no part at all.

I wouldn't say it is harmful (just like that). If you do you would have to apply the same to all tradition as repeating things regardless of whether you know the benefits of it.

In the past, tradition was one of ways to pass knowledge. There was no youtube or google available and people were generally were not able to read or attend classes.

Even today you teach your kids certain things they just have to do before they can have knowledge of why. For example brush their teeth.

Even then, repeating things like that is still one of the ways we cope with complexity of the world around you.

I am certain you are probably repeating some instructions from somebody on how to do something just because there is no time in the world for you to evaluate every single simple thing and decision.

On the other hand if somebody starts writing about it and discuss with other people, I expect them to put at least a little bit of effort into thinking about it if you are equipped for it (or shut up if you are not).

Repeating mindlessly on the Internet things you learned from somebody else is one way the world is broken today.

Like I said, it’s less “do your small part” and more “act in such a way that there would be good outcomes if everyone acted that way.” It’s basically the exact same reason to be polite in tiny interactions with strangers even though there would be no consequences if you were rude. If you disagree that there’s any virtue in acting in such a way because of the apparent lack of direct positive outcomes then that’s fine, but my point is simply that this is a common view about basic morality.

> even though there would be no consequences if you were rude

Of course there would be consequences if you were rude. Just not to you.

I would also add that being rude and not agreeing with somebody's statements are separate things.

For some reason people conflate the two and then it is difficult to have a civil discussion on the Internet.

Don't agree with somebody's response? Don't try to shift the discussion to something else like the particular choice of words and whether you "feel" it was rude. If you can't or are not willing to discuss the actual arguments it is better to stay silent.

I live in a place where fresh water is all over the place, and have had this same discussion with "environmentally conscious" people more than once. Me taking shorter showers, or not watering the lawn, or not letting the tap run until it gets cold will not affect other people's ability to get water. At all.

However, it does cost energy, I realized. And that's at least something to consider. Although minimally so, but at least it made me think a bit :)

Also, people love to talk about water as if it is a limited resource - it is only a limited resource in the local sense. On the global sense, we aren't changing the amount of water available, just the energy needed to get it.

That energy argument depends a lot.

My parents have their own well. It is less than 2m from the side of the house. Bottom of the well is about 2m below ground level, so you can almost stand in the well and stick your head out. There is usually about 50cm of water at the bottom of the well that gets quickly replenished whenever you take some out.

When we are talking the energy usage, the energy used to pump that water is practically negligible.

Now I understand this is as good as it ever gets (unless you have a stream that can actually produce energy) but consider that pumping water is almost everywhere taking less energy than energy to heat it up.

And if we go into processes like desalination, the amount of energy used grows very quickly. But this can be offset for example by building a solar plant dedicated to providing energy for desalination.