6 ms·

American lawns take up the same area as NY state, cost $40 billion a year

11 points by theoneill 18y ago

sdurkin 18y ago
Yes, but I like my lawn. It's green, I can lay on it, or just walk across it in my bare feet. The point is, its our 40 billion, and we can spend it any way we like.
- snewe 18y ago
  It is your $40 billion, however...when you see huge green lawns in deserts like central CA or Phoenix you should also see the enormous subsidies that are being handed out. If those that lived in deserts paid the real cost of water (not the public-monopoly regulated price), I suspect there would be a LOT fewer lawns. The same argument applies to the suburban sprawl: if those that decide to live 50 miles from the city center had to pay the real cost of building 6 lane highways to their "communities," few track houses would be built. Instead, an entire state or country splits the bill for roads and we get inefficient land use. // end rant;
kp212 18y ago
That's fine, but lets ban watering the lawn, its not your drinkable water to waste...
- sdurkin 18y ago
  Yes it is. I bought it. To me it's not a waste at all. If there's some sort of externality I'm not seeing, have the government tax me for it. Furthermore, even if I did pour the water down a drain, what business of yours is it as long as I bought it fairly?
  - biohacker42 18y ago
    I agree with both of you! What I mean is, that if only the government would price water correctly, I wouldn't mind at all if you and everyone else would pour it down the drain all day long. The problem is, the price of water is not set on the free market. I red somewhere that Seattle,WA has higher water prices then Phoenix,AZ.
  - kp212 18y ago
    Yes it is my business. This is the same approach people took on gas and corn. Consume so much until the price impacts us. Except this time, I don't want to pay $5 a gallon on water in 2020, because a bunch of people wanted to run it all day on their lawn at 25 cents a gallon in 2008. People already are stuggling on fuel, we don't need the same approach on water.
    - PieSquared 18y ago
      These problems are going to be solved by capitalistic means, not moral ones. When the economy and prices get people to do something, it will be done. But saying, oh please why don't you help the environment will not have a huge effect. This is why I don't participate in environmental rallies or clubs or whatever other crap our school tries to get us to participate in. Because for change to occur, it has to occur forcefully, not willingly. Either there have to be climate change/environmental protection laws, or there have to be economic incentives.
      - rw 18y ago
        Do not conflate capitalistic means with legal ones.
        PieSquared 18y ago
        My main point was that eventually the problem will be solved due to economic incentives, not moral ones. Somehow the mention of laws (legal incentives, I suppose?) crept into my post after I started writing it.
        xlnt 18y ago
        Note that following, rather than ignoring, economic incentives is the more moral way of life (other things being equal).
        PieSquared 18y ago
        Why? I don't really see the correlation... Unless it's of the basis that it is morally good to do things you find enjoyable?
  - jules 18y ago
    Your government can't make it so expensive that people don't do it anymore. If they do they won't be elected next time.
- gojomo 18y ago
  Americans spend about as much on pets, too. Do you want to ban feeding pets as wasteful?
  - astine 18y ago
    Yes! It will get those dogs next door to shut up. Then again, whose business is it really to decide what is wasteful or not? Value is ultimately subjective. Maybe I value drag racing more than my life, whose business is that really?
  - ars 18y ago
    It's is wasteful. If you define wasteful as anything not critical to staying alive. But then again pretty much everything is wasteful.
jonknee 18y ago
This study sounds way off. It was by NASA which means they were trying to tell a lawn from satellite. That's probably tough--having to discount natural grass land and farms (which there is a fair amount of) and accurately getting the percentage. Not to mention seeing through tree cover to see if there is grass below. There is a lot of green out there, not a whole lot of it is mowed lawns. 50,000 square miles is 1/70th of all land in the US including Alaska (3.5m sq mi total). If you've ever driven through the country, 1/70th is not a mowed lawn. You can drive for hundreds of miles without seeing a single one. If you discount Alaska the total is 1/58th. Looking another way that would be 32,000,000 acres of lawn. which comes out to 1/10 acre of lawn per person in the country. At first that seems more reasonable, 1/10th of an acre isn't a lot, but that's per person not household. A 4-person family comes to 4/10 of an acre--a decent sized lot. And since there are large numbers of people with no lawn the number increases for people who actually do (10m in NYC without one means 10m other people would need twice as much space, etc).
- xlnt 18y ago
  Congratulations, you're smarter than NASA. Well done. Now please solve this problem too: making NASA competent. (To be clear: no sarcasm intended.)
  - astine 18y ago
    I don't think he was saying that NASA was incompetent, but that the task at hand was infeasible, particularly using the means that NASA typically has a hand (ie. using satellite images instead of of county records.)
    - xlnt 18y ago
      He didn't say that, I did. He just pointed out mistakes they made, including not subjecting their results to a basic sanity test.
- jonknee 18y ago
  I found the study in question: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/ And does admit the limitations: > The satellites that can identify such small areas only observe small areas at a time, and the images they collect are expensive. So the author of the study created an equation and plugged in some numbers. Hardly actual research. The actual methodology is cute, check the sat for lights at night and then predict how "urban" it is and that means there is less lawn. (Though ironically on her map NYC is the highest concentration of lawn in America.) Too bad the results don't pass a reality check. She claims more lawn than farm, which is absurd (the CIA World Factbook shows the US at 18.01% arable land which is a cool 600,000 sq mi).
comatose_kid 18y ago
Why do print magazines make such poor use of the internet? It's not like it would have hurt them to add references to their research.(eg, how did they arrive at $40B figure?).
danteembermage 18y ago
I have a lawn because I know in the very near future I will be able to use vats of bacteria in my backyard to convert the clippings into: 1. Oil 2. Steak
- Andys 18y ago
  You know, in the distant past people had devices which converted them into steak too.
ssharp 18y ago
I'm proud to contribute my 3 acres to this. I definitely don't water any of it though - I want it to grow as little as possible! More growing = more mowing.
- hs 18y ago
  I switched to no-tech aquascape instead no more watering :D (maybe once a week water change) and only about once in three months for 'mowing' along with cleaning up fertilizing is also easy, fish and turtle excesses: just feed my turtles (separate aquarium) with excess floating leaves ... and get the fert the next day (the same spirit with those who use rabbit for fert) Alongside, i romantized with chemistry lab 101 ... after reading forums on ferts (google PMDD and Estimative Index) Made my own fert, mixing KNO3, KH2PO4 (NPK part), Mg,Zn,Fe and minor traces Chemistry is another side of life that u can get a lot with little effort ... so is aquascape (compared to gardening) These stuffs are almost like hacking/programming (tho not as scalable) so naturally i'm interested ;)
xlnt 18y ago
> The same study concluded that most of this New York State-size lawn was growing in places where turfgrass should never have been planted. That is scientism. They are pretending to be doing science (with all the respect due science) but are giving conclusions about moral issues like whether people should plant grass in a way that makes them happy, or not.
weegee 18y ago
how much will the cover of the New Yorker cost a year when Obama doesn't get elected? how many more will die in Iraq for no reason? How many innocent Iranians will die from McCains bombs? These are the questions you should be asking, New Yorker!

11 points by theoneill 18y ago

Yes, but I like my lawn. It's green, I can lay on it, or just walk across it in my bare feet. The point is, its our 40 billion, and we can spend it any way we like.

snewe 18y ago
It is your $40 billion, however...when you see huge green lawns in deserts like central CA or Phoenix you should also see the enormous subsidies that are being handed out. If those that lived in deserts paid the real cost of water (not the public-monopoly regulated price), I suspect there would be a LOT fewer lawns. The same argument applies to the suburban sprawl: if those that decide to live 50 miles from the city center had to pay the real cost of building 6 lane highways to their "communities," few track houses would be built. Instead, an entire state or country splits the bill for roads and we get inefficient land use. // end rant;

kp212 18y ago

That's fine, but lets ban watering the lawn, its not your drinkable water to waste...

sdurkin 18y ago
Yes it is. I bought it. To me it's not a waste at all. If there's some sort of externality I'm not seeing, have the government tax me for it. Furthermore, even if I did pour the water down a drain, what business of yours is it as long as I bought it fairly?
- biohacker42 18y ago
  I agree with both of you! What I mean is, that if only the government would price water correctly, I wouldn't mind at all if you and everyone else would pour it down the drain all day long. The problem is, the price of water is not set on the free market. I red somewhere that Seattle,WA has higher water prices then Phoenix,AZ.
- kp212 18y ago
  Yes it is my business. This is the same approach people took on gas and corn. Consume so much until the price impacts us. Except this time, I don't want to pay $5 a gallon on water in 2020, because a bunch of people wanted to run it all day on their lawn at 25 cents a gallon in 2008. People already are stuggling on fuel, we don't need the same approach on water.
  - PieSquared 18y ago
    These problems are going to be solved by capitalistic means, not moral ones. When the economy and prices get people to do something, it will be done. But saying, oh please why don't you help the environment will not have a huge effect. This is why I don't participate in environmental rallies or clubs or whatever other crap our school tries to get us to participate in. Because for change to occur, it has to occur forcefully, not willingly. Either there have to be climate change/environmental protection laws, or there have to be economic incentives.
    - rw 18y ago
      Do not conflate capitalistic means with legal ones.
      - PieSquared 18y ago
        My main point was that eventually the problem will be solved due to economic incentives, not moral ones. Somehow the mention of laws (legal incentives, I suppose?) crept into my post after I started writing it.
        xlnt 18y ago
        Note that following, rather than ignoring, economic incentives is the more moral way of life (other things being equal).
        PieSquared 18y ago
        Why? I don't really see the correlation... Unless it's of the basis that it is morally good to do things you find enjoyable?
- jules 18y ago
  Your government can't make it so expensive that people don't do it anymore. If they do they won't be elected next time.
gojomo 18y ago
Americans spend about as much on pets, too. Do you want to ban feeding pets as wasteful?
- astine 18y ago
  Yes! It will get those dogs next door to shut up. Then again, whose business is it really to decide what is wasteful or not? Value is ultimately subjective. Maybe I value drag racing more than my life, whose business is that really?
- ars 18y ago
  It's is wasteful. If you define wasteful as anything not critical to staying alive. But then again pretty much everything is wasteful.

jonknee 18y ago

This study sounds way off. It was by NASA which means they were trying to tell a lawn from satellite. That's probably tough--having to discount natural grass land and farms (which there is a fair amount of) and accurately getting the percentage. Not to mention seeing through tree cover to see if there is grass below. There is a lot of green out there, not a whole lot of it is mowed lawns. 50,000 square miles is 1/70th of all land in the US including Alaska (3.5m sq mi total). If you've ever driven through the country, 1/70th is not a mowed lawn. You can drive for hundreds of miles without seeing a single one. If you discount Alaska the total is 1/58th. Looking another way that would be 32,000,000 acres of lawn. which comes out to 1/10 acre of lawn per person in the country. At first that seems more reasonable, 1/10th of an acre isn't a lot, but that's per person not household. A 4-person family comes to 4/10 of an acre--a decent sized lot. And since there are large numbers of people with no lawn the number increases for people who actually do (10m in NYC without one means 10m other people would need twice as much space, etc).

xlnt 18y ago
Congratulations, you're smarter than NASA. Well done. Now please solve this problem too: making NASA competent. (To be clear: no sarcasm intended.)
- astine 18y ago
  I don't think he was saying that NASA was incompetent, but that the task at hand was infeasible, particularly using the means that NASA typically has a hand (ie. using satellite images instead of of county records.)
  - xlnt 18y ago
    He didn't say that, I did. He just pointed out mistakes they made, including not subjecting their results to a basic sanity test.
jonknee 18y ago
I found the study in question: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/ And does admit the limitations: > The satellites that can identify such small areas only observe small areas at a time, and the images they collect are expensive. So the author of the study created an equation and plugged in some numbers. Hardly actual research. The actual methodology is cute, check the sat for lights at night and then predict how "urban" it is and that means there is less lawn. (Though ironically on her map NYC is the highest concentration of lawn in America.) Too bad the results don't pass a reality check. She claims more lawn than farm, which is absurd (the CIA World Factbook shows the US at 18.01% arable land which is a cool 600,000 sq mi).

comatose_kid 18y ago

Why do print magazines make such poor use of the internet? It's not like it would have hurt them to add references to their research.(eg, how did they arrive at $40B figure?).

danteembermage 18y ago

I have a lawn because I know in the very near future I will be able to use vats of bacteria in my backyard to convert the clippings into: 1. Oil 2. Steak

Andys 18y ago
You know, in the distant past people had devices which converted them into steak too.

ssharp 18y ago

I'm proud to contribute my 3 acres to this. I definitely don't water any of it though - I want it to grow as little as possible! More growing = more mowing.

hs 18y ago
I switched to no-tech aquascape instead no more watering :D (maybe once a week water change) and only about once in three months for 'mowing' along with cleaning up fertilizing is also easy, fish and turtle excesses: just feed my turtles (separate aquarium) with excess floating leaves ... and get the fert the next day (the same spirit with those who use rabbit for fert) Alongside, i romantized with chemistry lab 101 ... after reading forums on ferts (google PMDD and Estimative Index) Made my own fert, mixing KNO3, KH2PO4 (NPK part), Mg,Zn,Fe and minor traces Chemistry is another side of life that u can get a lot with little effort ... so is aquascape (compared to gardening) These stuffs are almost like hacking/programming (tho not as scalable) so naturally i'm interested ;)

xlnt 18y ago

> The same study concluded that most of this New York State-size lawn was growing in places where turfgrass should never have been planted. That is scientism. They are pretending to be doing science (with all the respect due science) but are giving conclusions about moral issues like whether people should plant grass in a way that makes them happy, or not.

weegee 18y ago

how much will the cover of the New Yorker cost a year when Obama doesn't get elected? how many more will die in Iraq for no reason? How many innocent Iranians will die from McCains bombs? These are the questions you should be asking, New Yorker!