One of the most enduring in-jokes in my family, particularly in this Thanksgiving season, is the line: “Let’s talk about the Energy Crisis.” This was once said, in all seriousness, by five-year-old me at the dinner table one evening during the Nixon era. I’m sure I had no idea what the energy crisis was (just as I have no real idea of half the stuff I talk about on this blog), but to this day, whenever dinner conversation dies down to nothing, or there is an awkward silence to fill, someone will quip “Let’s talk about the Energy Crisis.” (thus ensuring I will never, ever live that down)

So just in case you have nothing acceptable to talk about at the dinner table tomorrow with your nearest and dearest, here are a few links to conversation starters about America’s water crisis.

• Forget about peak oil; peak water is the new buzzword.
• One Atlanta blogger on interstate squabbling over the water supply.
• Atlantans versus other Georgians, sounding curiously like Downstaters vs. Upstaters.
• Should people in Atlanta stop having babies? (Well, don’t we tell this to people in drought-stricken areas of the Third World?)
• The staggering cost of transporting water in California.
• Drink all your water — there are people going thirsty in India.
• The politics of water-selling in Wisconsin. (A localized version of national arrangements to come?)
• Find the chilling quote on water and the federal government in this blog article.

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving… May your turkeys not be dry!