By "this way" do you mean saving water at restaurants?
More generally, the topic is saving water as consumed by ordinary people. That involves saving water at restaurants, not taking excessively long showers, not cleaning one's dishes in inefficient ways, fixing leaky pipes in one's house, etc. etc.
All of those things add up, and can make a dent in the 20% or so of water consumption that is due to ordinary people.
Of course it would be better to make a dent in the 80%. But I don't think the two preclude each other - there have been improvements in the 80% with some agriculture moving to drip irrigation, and so forth.
If it is shown that legislators spending time on the 20% makes them less effective at tackling the 80%, I would immediately agree that we should ignore the 20%. But I haven't yet seen that evidence, if it exists.
>If it is shown that legislators spending time on the 20%
They are spending time on a tiny fraction of the 20%. It's utterly pointless and idiotic. You keep suggesting that 'all of these things add up', but provide no evidence that they add up to more than 0.01% of the 20%.
I eat out at restaurants many times a week. If none of them served me any water, it might save 1-2 gallon per week (assuming I didn't want the water at a single restaurant that gave it). Between drinking water elsewhere, bathroom breaks, a daily shower, dishes twice a week, and laundry once a week, we are talking about 1-2 percent of my usage at most. I eat out more than the average person, I DON'T EVEN HAVE A LAWN, and we are already down to 1-2 percent of my consumption.
To put my consumption into perspective, my weekly amount is about the same as it takes to grow 1 or 2 almonds. Are you starting to see how idiotic it is to even consider stopping restaurants from serving water is?
The fact that they even considered this as feasible shows a complete lack of basic math skills or relative reasoning. I get that some people want to feel like they are helping with the drought so they do this kind of stuff, but it's actively harmful because it gives the impression they are doing something useful.
More generally, the topic is saving water as consumed by ordinary people. That involves saving water at restaurants, not taking excessively long showers, not cleaning one's dishes in inefficient ways, fixing leaky pipes in one's house, etc. etc.
All of those things add up, and can make a dent in the 20% or so of water consumption that is due to ordinary people.
Of course it would be better to make a dent in the 80%. But I don't think the two preclude each other - there have been improvements in the 80% with some agriculture moving to drip irrigation, and so forth.
If it is shown that legislators spending time on the 20% makes them less effective at tackling the 80%, I would immediately agree that we should ignore the 20%. But I haven't yet seen that evidence, if it exists.