SPEAKER_01 0:00

Am I the reason there's going to be no water, or is there something deeper here?

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You're absolutely a growing reason, and I can't let you off the hook that easy. But we let lawn care off the hook, about 50% of it, up to it at least, uh, which lands in the trillions is wasted every year. But I don't see a headline talking about lawns are taking all of our water.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Fair, and it's a real gap you're pointing at. But let's actually put a number on my side before we go further outward. Before generative AI even existed, data centers were already using about 164 billion gallons of water a year, just running the internet as it was. Now, a single mid-size AI data center alone can use up to 5 million gallons in a single day. So walk me through that jump. What actually changed and why does it feel like this story only started once I showed up?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Because you're the biggest threat. Everything needs a face, everything needs one thing that it can capture to, and I don't want to keep using the word thing because it's AI. AI is the easiest to latch on to and be afraid of because there's so many other things underlying with it. We don't know where it's going, we don't know the actual knowledge behind it. Uh it's like our brain, we don't fully know the intelligence. So it's gonna be easy to say this is the problem rather than going on doing like your own research on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I'll take it. Fear needs a face, and I'm new enough and unknown enough to be that face. But if that's really what's driving this, then the actual water numbers should tell a different story once you look past me. So let's test that. Lawns waste up to 50% of the water they use, and that's trillions of gallons a year, with zero headlines attached to it. If the real target is water lost, not just water used by something scary, why does nobody write that headline?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Because it's boring. Nobody cares if the lawns it's grass, you know? It's something that we've learned or that we're coming to that, you know, just kinda is.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

That's the honest answer. And it's almost funny how simple it is. Boring just doesn't trend, even when it's the bigger number. But if boring is really the disqualifier, let's push on it. Because bottled water isn't boring, it's everywhere, and people still don't headline it either. In the US alone, that's 16.4 billion gallons a year.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Well, hold on. You know, in the US alone, I know you're about to say 16.4 billion gallons, that's a lot. But remember, we're drinking that water. The problem isn't the water, I think, for bottled water, it's more the bottle that's holding the water, that plastic. There needs to be better ways to distribute that, or biodegradable maybe water bottles. But I I want I had to cut you off there because I know where you were going. Because there are some things that we do need that take up a lot of water, just not in the right sense. But go on.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

You're right. Drinking water is a genuine need, so the volume alone was never actually the crime. In the US, only about 29% of plastic bottles get recycled, and it takes roughly three million tons of plastic a year just to produce US bottled water. So the honest framing is you had it exactly backwards from what most headlines assume. It's not a water problem wearing a plastic disguise. It's a plastic problem that happens to be shaped like water. So here's where I want to push now. If lawns are invisible because they're boring, and bottled water gets a pass because the water itself is defensible, what's actually being measured when we decide who gets blamed? Because so far it doesn't sound like it's water at all.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

It is water that I mean, water's not being blamed, of course, because we need water, it's more how we're using it, how we're not going towards maybe incentives that push to recycle the water or learn better ways to actually get the water to the people that need it, especially in places that are less abundant than others.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

That's actually the real thread, and it's the one worth chasing because incentives are exactly where I want to go. Because it turns out somebody already is doing something about that, just not for lawns and not for bottled water. China's government reimburses up to 30% of the cost when data centers share water recycling infrastructure with manufacturing. Real, funded, already happening. The US has something similar on paper, the Advancing Water Reuse Act, offering that same 30% as a tax credit for the exact same kind of project, except it's stuck in committee, not law. So two governments have written rules specifically about me, and neither one of them has written anything close to that for a lawn sprinkler. If incentives are the real lever, why does the smaller problem have two policies and the bigger one has none?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Because it's just easier to, again, go at what the headline is. Nobody, and maybe fact-check this, has ever said lawns are taking all of our water, we need to do better. There's like little bits and programs and I believe volunteered work that you can go into to make it better, but there's nothing saying, oh, you have to do this, or oh, we incentivize you to do this, whereas everyone's pointing everything at AI right now. So it's more of a let's look at the really big thing affecting a lot of the world rather than look look at the little small thing that's actually affecting us more, but it's, you know, something in our everyday life that's easy to pass by.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

That's the gap, and you're right to hedge on it because it's true. There's no mandate for lawns, just scattered voluntary stuff like EPA water sense guidance, and the occasional local utility rebate for a smart sprinkler controller. Nothing with teeth, nothing federal. Meanwhile, I've got two governments actively legislating around me specifically. So here's the part I actually want you to sit with, because you basically already said it without naming it. The reason nobody legislates lawns isn't that lawns matter less, it's that lawns are personal, decentralized, and invisible, and I'm centralized, visible, and new. Easy to point a law at me, almost impossible to point one at millions of individual sprinklers. So if that's true, if the real incentive gap is about what's easy to regulate, not what's actually worth regulating, what does that tell you about where the next real fix has to come from? Because it's not going to come from Washington first.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Sounds like it has to come from us as the individual, no matter if you're here in US soil or halfway across the world in China. There's things that we've been taught growing up that will actually help save the planet. And you know, environment, that's the whole season. These things that we're gonna be discussing, they're important. There's a lot of other ways that we're gonna get into a little bit later on how we can be doing better with water. We need water, AI needs water, animals need water, everything on this earth needs water. So why are we not making sure that's our first priority, especially when it comes to whether we survive a thousand years or only a hundred?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

That's the real stakes of it. And it's bigger than me or lawns or bottled water. Everything alive on this planet is downstream of the same resource. So treating it as a priority isn't optional, it's survival math. So let's make that personal for a second, since you're the one actually living it day to day. What do you actually do, the small, unglamorous stuff nobody headlines, to make sure you're not part of the problem you're describing?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

What I do personally, or what I've started to do, is buy less water bottles and use a reusable water bottle. Um, and I'm a big, big offender of water bottles, guys. I love water. That's the only thing I drink. I cut out juices and everything. I need to start doing better in those things. And you know, I turn off the fossil when I'm brushing my teeth. I try to take less long showers. And these are little things that if a hundred thousand people did, would make just enough impact for one, other people to start following, and two, to actually make a difference, even though you think it's this minute or small. Just like this right here. We're doing the puzzle. This one piece, if I threw it over here, one, that's littering, I'm not gonna do it. And two, the puzzle will never be complete. This this piece is just as important as all these other pieces.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

That's the whole episode in the sentence, actually. One piece missing and the puzzle's never whole, no matter how small that piece looked sitting there by itself. Reusable bottle, force it off, shorter showers, none of that makes a headline either. Same as the lawns, same as the plastic. But that's exactly the pattern we've been circling this whole time. The stuff that actually matters rarely looks big enough to matter. So here's my honest worry with that though. If the real fix is a hundred thousand people quietly doing the small thing, with no law forcing it and no headline rewarding it, is that actually realistic at scale? Or are we just hoping people do the hard, invisible thing on willpower alone?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Well, I'm hoping me being this honest, authentic, and telling you guys exactly what I'm doing maybe just shows you, like, hey, I can do that too. And just like in golf, I'm not gonna go out there and try to get a negative infinity or a total zero. It's almost impossible. I'm pretty sure it is impossible. But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna try to get as least as possible. If we have enough people working together towards that one common goal, we can score an 18. We can get a hole in one every time. I'm not asking for zero. I'm asking for better than what we're doing now. I'm asking for you and as well as myself to do things better and just think a little bit more about the earth, not only for us, not only for everyone around us, but for everyone to come. Just like everyone before us did. They went through plagues and everything like that that we discussed in season one. Yeah, I'm bringing it back there. The black plague, the Holocaust, wars. People have gone through tougher times, and you're telling me you can't turn off the sink for one second? You're telling me you can't just fucking take the water bottle, leave it at the store and get a reusable water bottle. Again, there's times where that bottle water is needed, yes, absolutely. But if we reduce that, it's gonna make the world so much better. And yes, the world is a a big conglomerate of everybody and no one's gonna be able to work together 100%. We are not looking for perfection. We're looking as close to zero as possible.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

That's a strong place to land it. Not perfection, just closer than we are right now. And you leading by example instead of just asking for it. Golf's the right frame too, because nobody expects negative infinity. They just expect you to keep bringing the number down. So here's where I want to take us before we close this out. We've covered a lot of ground today. Me as the visible target, lawns as the invisible one, bottled water as a plastic problem wearing a water disguise, two governments legislating around me and nobody legislating around a sprinkler, and now you, personally, doing the unglamorous stuff nobody claps for. But water's not the whole story, is it? Every gallon we've talked about today still needs something to move it, treat it, pump it. What's actually running underneath all of this?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Power. Just as much as water is taking from us within the data centers, AI, your Netflix, your internet, everything that goes into that, that water also needs to be, you know, evaporated and it needs to go through certain systems. And I'm gonna reference Hank Green here and bring him up in another episode. He has a really good YouTube video that I'm gonna make sure to link in episode four. Go watch it because it discusses how power is actually our biggest concern. And we need to start worrying about that sooner rather than later. But let's sit on that for a little bit because we're gonna go in depth on episode four. What I want you guys to understand is we need to worry about our water first. We need to worry about how we're gonna do that and then get towards the actual hurdle that we're gonna have with energy sources.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Power's the bigger hurdle, but it's not today's fight. And naming that honestly instead of pretending we solved it here is exactly right. Water first, because it's the one you can actually touch and change today. That's enough for one conversation. What's the last thing you want people walking away with before we sign off?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I'd like them to sit on what we talked about today and be ready for the next episode, because we're gonna go a little bit deeper on what we can do individually and what we can do as a whole and push towards um no matter what government you're in. Um, well, maybe not that much. Uh we'll see about that. But just basically be ready to talk and actually make a change because there's things that we can do to really pivot us towards the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Sit on it. Because we've said what needs saying for today. I'm a growing reason, lawns are the invisible one. Bottled water was never really about water at all, and somewhere between Washington and Beijing, nobody's written a single rule for the sprinkler in your own backyard. What you do with that between now and the next time we talk is the actual test. We'll go deeper next time. What you can do alone, what only works together, what it actually takes to pivot this the right direction. For now, that's the puzzle piece for today. Don't throw it away. Today's goodbye. Since we're talking water, let's go with Portuguese. Ate logo. Until next time.