LET'S TALK ABOUT A REALLY PRECIOUS RESOURCE

Compared to all the talk about conserving gas, there's relatively little about conserving water. After all, we may have finite fossil fuels, but it's always raining somewhere.

But, not to get all alarmist, there may be a day when we look back on the many ways we piss away good water and wonder how we could've been so dumb. Water may replenish itself, but it and not oil may be the liquid nations fight and die over more in the coming decades.

I found this interesting water usage calculator courtesy of Governing.com's blog. Taking the test reminded me that water conservation comes not only from taking shorter showers and installing low-flow faucet heads but also in eating less meat and recycling our textiles.

It may decades away, versus the modern-day impacts of more appropriately priced gasoline (cities enjoying a renaissance, used SUVs now impossible to sell), but maybe places like Canada and Iceland go up in demand, and places like Saudi Arabia and Las Vegas go down. Maybe I'm being too doomsday. Or maybe it doesn't take a futurist to see that golf courses and fountains can't survive in a desert, or that people will some day go to war to provide their citizens with water to drink faster than they'll go to war to secure access to fuel to put in their cars.