If you live in California, perhaps the wildfires are getting dangerously close to your home. You realize that, at any moment, you could lose everything - or maybe you already have. If you get any news at all, you've been hearing about the dry conditions, which provide fertile ground for the fires, and the ever-worsening drought that leaves little water to fight them. The government tells you to stop washing your car and to take shorter showers. Then, your friend from across the continent - in Georgia - called to say that their governor just issued an urgent message saying "Georgia will have no more water in 90 days." Your kids are really terrified and can't be thoroughly comforted, because you can't hide YOUR fearful face. It all seems like a surreal horror movie, but this is reality.

Water is the elixir of life, so what happens when it's gone? Well, the good news is there is a real solution, but first you have to understand the real problem and how you contribute to it.

If you want to do nothing other than wish these problems would go away, or if you just want to continue pretending they don't exist, then stop reading this right now. Still reading? Good, I am about to show you one of the chief culprits of our water problems and, in so doing, offer the real solution.

There are some statistics originally published by John Robbins in his book, Diet For A New America, showing where all the water is going. While it takes about 23 gallons of water to grow one pound of tomatoes and 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat, it takes over 5,200 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.

The world's fresh water is getting sucked up by "meatism," i.e., the production and consumption of meat and dairy. What's worse, of the water that's left, virtually all of it is being contaminated in the process. It is a blatant myth that fire, desertification (dust bowls) and drought are caused (or would be helped) by short showers and dirty cars. We would have no water problems if we were all vegan and took long showers.

That is certainly not to say that anybody should be wasteful of our resources, but let's understand the real problem. Also understand that it doesn't take an action on the part of the government to fix our water woes, because this is one problem the government didn't cause (at least not at this level). Look on your breakfast, lunch and dinner plate and if you see anything related to meatism, you are contributing to the problem. Abundant clean water and meatism are mutually exclusive.

The terrific and all-empowering news is if we all turned to a plant-based diet, a vegan diet, the ever-increasing parched earth would once again have plentiful water.

Your call.