Waste, want.

A couple of days back, there was an item on Global News about a high-rise apartment building in Toronto where people had been living without fresh water for several days. The particulars--the why of it all--skipped in one ear and out the other. What really threw me for a loop was the outrage expressed by several residents on camera.
I suppose I'd be pretty upset, too...the only source of clean water was a hose outside the building. And the landlord really did seem to be rather blase about it all. But at the same time, it's funny nobody mentioned that being able to access clean water from a hose within easy walking distance of your dwelling is a luxury beyond price for the majority of the planet.
It is really rather frightening how much we take for granted. There's nothing we won't waste: food, water, energy...what the hell, there's always more where that came from, right? We love to sit up here in our moral coccoons, raining opprobrium on the United States, but we're not so hot ourselves.
Survey the skyline after dark in any Canadian city. You'd think we were a nation of the night: light after needless light burning, burning all night long. How much would it cost to hook every light up to a motion sensor, as is done in many places in Europe? It might be a substantial outlay, but I bet it would pay for itself many times over in energy savings. If you can't shame your employer into just once thinking about the environment, maybe you can point out the positive effect on the bottom line.
Here in Ontario, we're running increasingly short of energy, such that another blackout like the one in August of 2003 is all but inevitable. Our Premier is discussing new nuclear power plants, which are the best choice out of a bad lot until we have green power available in sufficient
quantities to run our society. Solar and wind can supply a house adequately enough, but you won't find many factories running off the grid.
But in the meantime, next to nothing is being done on the conservation end of things. Oh, there's a campaign in place extolling the virtues, but in Canada today there's one overriding concern that trumps sacrifice every time and that concern is ME. ME ME ME ME MEMEMEME....why should I 'suffer'? I pay my energy bill! It is my right to blast my air conditioner 24/7 if I want! And I want! I want it all! I want it now!
We'll all end up wanting in the long run.
Toronto is still shipping off a hundred tonnes of waste a day to Michigan, which seems to be about to ban garbage from foreign countries. (And rightly so: what, is Canada too small or something?) Again, I look to Europe for a solution: incineration. People are dead-set against the idea here, despite new 'clean-burning' technology. As I see it, incineration is a no-brainer: not only does it get rid of your waste, without leaving it in the ground to contaminate everything it touches, but it also produces energy. Energy, you know, that stuff we're critically short on?
Robert Heinlein came up with a brilliant partial solution to the problem of polluted water: pass a law stating that all factories must place their intake valves immediately downstream of their outflow valves. If only there was some way to painlessly conserve water...wait a minute! What about those sensors that you find in public bathrooms, the ones that shut off the water if there's not something directly underneath it? How about houses that heat with hot water? Mandated low-flow toilets and showerheads? There are lots of things that can and should be done. All it takes is the correct mindset.