Since I've never had to live through a major situation in which the powers that be deemed it necessary to ration water and electricity, one of my main memories of such an event is from an episode of, "The Twilight Zone." In it, the earth is moving closer and closer to the sun. I'm not sure if it was water or energy or both, but the government definitely had to ration its resources, because things were getting hot. In the end, the earth was actually moving away from the sun, and the opposite scenario had only been a dream. Still, it got me thinking: If the worst-case scenario entails rationing, could we start rationing early and prevent the worst-case scenario?
It's like when you had a huge project way back when you were still in school. You could have started studying and working like crazy from Day 1. Or you could have started a leisurely study schedule from Day 1. Both of those approaches would have likely set you up nicely, with a project to turn in when the time finally came. But what about Option 3? The one where you figure you've got all the time in the world, and keep putting your project off until the night before it's due. At that point, you've got no choice but to dig in and focus on doing what has to be done. You ration your "fun time" so severely that you just barely manage to crank out the project overnight. Although it's not perfect, it's good enough to get you by.
I feel like right now, we're all procrastinating because we "know" the time will eventually come when we'll wish we had acted sooner, but we feel that time is still far off. So what if we start rationing all our resources right now, when it's supremely "unnecessary?" The only way to make that work would be to have the rationing occur worldwide. Otherwise we'd handicap ourselves. But I believe a worldwide rationing system would be deemed "wholly impractical at this juncture." But if 10 years from now that's no longer the case, would our future selves think, "If only we had taken the opportunity to ration things sooner..."?
I hope not, because I just don't see us taking any kind of potentially useful, but "unnecessary" action.
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