For me the 1970s were drought and a lifelong awareness of water conservation. Edit to add: buckets to collect water from "warming up the shower" and using them to flush toilets must be one of my earliest complete memories of a complex process.

If anything, our family culture of thrift came from parents who were small children during WWII rationing and grandparents who were children in the Great Depression. I sometimes can even imagine there is an epigenetic factor here, leading to more obsessive (compulsive?) planning, optimizing, and risk management behaviors...