【推荐1】“If you think the oil wars are bad, wait until the water wars begin.”

Ron Jones, president of Green Builder Media, recently made this alarming prediction. With severe drought conditions expanding across the globe, the future water crisis he warns of may become a reality more quickly and acutely than we think. Fortunately, many entrepreneurial companies are in hot pursuit of solving water crises and reducing water use in homes.

WaterFX, a company in Fresno County, uses solar thermal technology to turn salty and polluted irrigation runoff into pure water. Its pilot system produces about 14,000 gallons per day for its customers, who are mostly local farmers, and the company has plans to significantly increase production to 2 million gallons daily in the next few years.

Advances in water purification are encouraging, and residential (住宅的) water conservation also plays a role in meeting water-efficiency goals. Homebuilding company KB Home recently built its first Double ZeroHouse in Lancaster, Calif, one of the most water-challenged areas of the country. It’s a net-zero-energy building (potentiallyyieldingan electric bill of $0) that reuses greywater, and saves water with ultra-efficient appliances.

KB Home estimates that the structure can conserve 150,000 gallons of water each year when compared with a typical home, which is an average reduction of approximately 70 percent. The Double ZeroHouse’s advanced greywater system first pipes greywater from sinks, tubs, showers and washing machines into a heat-recovery system. As hot water runs through the system, the heat is extracted (提取) and used to preheat fresh water in the tankless water heater. This heat exchange results in about a 30 percent savings on water heating. Next, the greywater is channeled into a collection tank, where it’s stored for watering the landscape or garden.

As the cost of water rises, employing creative conservation solutions is not only vital to addressing our water crisis, but also important to keeping monthly utility (水电费) bills affordable for homeowners.

【推荐1】Leonardo DiCaprio cares about climate change and has made environmental protection his life’s work. Besides leading his own environmental organization, the film star sits on the board of several other organizations, and his efforts have been celebrated by the United Nations.

But while many Hollywood stars are environmentally aware(意识到的)off screen, a new study shows the movie industry isn’t doing nearly enough on screen to keep climate change in everyday conversation. Researchers studied 37,453 scripts (剧本), looking for 36 climate keywords like “climate change”. They found only about 2.8% had any mention of the keywords. However, the word “dog” was mentioned 13 times more than all 36 climate words.

The study was published with a guidebook, Good Energy, to help screenwriters to focus more on climate change in movies and TV shows. The book was written after discussion with over 100 screenwriters and producers, as well as climate experts. Information about climate has an important part in the book, along with suggestions on how to shape characters and offer climate solutions on screen, Katherine Oliver, who helped with the print of the book, said, “Our goal should be to bridge the gap between the world we live in and the modern world we see on TV.”

Salire(讽刺)is used in Don’t Look Up , which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in a story satirizing the worlds cold reaction to climate change. Writer-director Adam McKay was among those who joined the discussion about the book. “We’ve seen how the film has created more conversation to call on people to look up,” McKay said.

Supporters of the book call this just the start and say it’s up to Hollywood to tailor scripts so that they can mirror the terrible situation the world is facing in real life. If we’re doing a scene(场景)in a supermarket, let there be people refusing to use plastic bags. Or if we’re doing scenes where we can be modeling healthy eating, then let’s have a system that can offer clean water.

【推荐2】People get distracted by irrelevant websites and unproductive tasks occasionally. According to McKinsey, high-skilled workers in the U.S. spend a surprising 28% of their working hours reading and replying to e-mail messages. But if we learned to manage our distraction by communication technology in a more efficient manner, we could give the economy a $900 million to $1.3 trillion boost per year.

How did we end up in this situation? The 21st century is characterized by connectivity. Over the past couple of decades, it has become increasingly difficult to disconnect from sources of information. And this addiction becomes especially apparent when we lose our phones or our Internet connection drops out. For example, have you ever mislaid your phone for a few hours and become crazy at the thought of missing out on social media updates?

Originally, smartphones and other portable devices were designed to maximize convenience. Unfortunately, now they have turned into a distraction that often interrupts our daily lives. Every time your attention is diverted away from your task, you lose time. It takes effort to get back on track, and repeated interruptions can demotivate you. The more complicated your project is, the longer it takes to regain your focus, because your brain has to put in considerable effort when switching between complex objectives.

So what can you do? First, when focusing on an important project, you can put your phone and other devices away. If you don’t receive any messages, you won’t be distracted. There’s also a useful technique that will quickly get you back on track: The 20-Second Rule. It’s believed by some psychologists that if something—such as checking your social media—takes you 20 seconds longer to do, you’re less likely to do it. So you need to make it slightly more difficult to give in to temptation. For example, uninstall(卸载) a messaging app so that it takes you 20 seconds longer to install it again and log in. This approach means you do not have to rely on willpower. Instead, you will have set up a reliable system that facilitates good habits.