Resident outraged by harmful impacts of neighbor's careless daily habit: 'They don't have any guilt'

In an era of human history that features rising global temperatures and increasingly severe droughts throughout the world, you would think people would monitor their water usage more carefully. But, alas, selfishness is a powerful (and easy) human impulse.

A post on the Chennai subreddit (focused on the Indian city of the same name) illustrated this infuriating problem well.

It showed a grainy photo of their neighbor's water motor running, and it shared the original poster's frustrations about how it was a regular occurrence.

"My neighbor [turns] on the motor and never [turns it] off," the post read. "Every single day it will [run] for hours and someone [has] to remind them. Today it was literally running for three hours. They just turned on the motor and went to sleep. … They don't have any guilt for wasting water."

If we are to combat the issues associated with a warming planet effectively, it is going to take major collective efforts.

While more and more people are seeking climate-friendly home solutions, from installing solar panels to using heat pumps to installing native-plant lawns, it only takes one difficult or unaware neighbor to stop any progress in its tracks.

Perhaps the easiest way to combat such potentially flammable situations is to simply form a good relationship with your neighbors, so that any conflicts that might arise can get resolved between the two of you — hopefully without significant environmental or property damage in the process.

Commenters were understanding and sympathetic to the OP's plight.

"The main reasons are negligence, lack of awareness, and no accountability," read one top comment, wisely assessing that the reason many people inadvertently act against sustainability is simply because they are apathetic and not incentivized to learn more about it. "Since many rely on borewells, they assume water is unlimited."

"Because they are not penalized for wasting water," another user half-joked. "The moment they are penalized, they'll become conservationists of water. … That's the magic a punishment can do."

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