Me vs. the Earth

I've been living in southern Arizona (Casa Grande, to be specific) for about a month now, and I feel like I'm personally strangling the Earth with my bare hands.

• Water. Casa Grande is in the Colorado basin, one of the most water-strapped regions of the world. My personal water consumption is a tiny drop compared to the giant cotton farms and gated communities with private lakes all around us, but we're still making it that much less likely that any water from the Colorado will ever reach the ocean.
  
• Gas. Public transportation in CG consists of one Greyhound a day to and from Phoenix and Tucson. We're comparatively lucky to have a Safeway right around the corner, but to get to anything else practically requires a car, given how spread out everything is (and how brutally hot it is to walk).
  
• Recycling. Even the ultimate feel-good greenie activity, recycling, is tough to do out here. Arizona as a whole is not doing so well on this front. There is curbside recycling for most of CG, but it doesn't cover apartment complexes. So if I want to recycle, I have to drive my stuff to the dump (located way out of town, and open inconvenient hours) myself.
  
• AC. Even with the thermostat set fairly high (82) and turning off the air during the day, we're still running the most energy-sucking of appliances an awful lot of the time.