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It’s just a symptom of the larger problem of manicured lawns being the number one “managed crop” in America. Eliminating home lawn is probably one of the singu
by AndrewKemendo 3y ago
It’s just a symptom of the larger problem of manicured lawns being the number one “managed crop” in America.
Eliminating home lawn is probably one of the singular things that would significantly slow down our destruction of the planet
I’m sure someone will post some reason why their lawn is different somehow
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_55d0dc06e4b07addcb43435d https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_5...
[2] https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/31/this-heatwave-is-a-reminder-that-grass-lawns-are-terrible-for-the-environment https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/31/this-h...
- Waterluvian 3y agoI’ve never seen a leaf blower used for grass up here. Only leaves. But I also never see the gas powered backpack blowers portrayed on TV so maybe I’m perceiving a different context.
- discordance 3y agoI think the point was, if we didn't have lawns then leaves could remain where they fall and mulch the soil.
- chmod600 3y agoLeaves get everywhere and cover sidewalks, roads, roofs and gutters, etc. Over time, they degrade into an unsafe slimy surface.
- campboy 3y agoEven without lawns people will use leaf blowers to blow leaves, off their driveways or xeriscapes or whatever. So we should ban gas powered leaf blowers regardless.
- mcpackieh 3y agoI think he means that everybody should be made to live in apartments or condos, without any sort of garden, patios, etc. Dense urban living for everybody.
- malfist 3y agoThat is not what GP said at all?
- diego_sandoval 3y agoNot really, but suburban life should stop being indirectly subsidized.
- galleywest200 3y agoHaving a lawn and having a garden are two different things. You can have a house with property without a giant lawn. Your comment is a disingenuous interpretation of the original poster I do agree that houses with large lawns and zero food crops are just... wasteful. I rent so I am limited to what I could do, otherwise I would just till my lawn and make almost the entire thing into garden beds. I dislike seeing those houses that have what amount to prairies and on that grass you see just a few horses or whatever. Such a waste of arable land.
- 8ytecoder 3y agoThat’s a cynical interpretation. I have about 4000 sqft of garden with only about 25sqft with grass. Trees, plants, flowering plants, succulents - all of them infinitely more beautiful and low maintenance than a lawn.
- kspacewalk2 3y agoI live in a detached house in the suburbs and I don't own a leaf blower, have never watered the grass, cut it about once a month (and thinking of low maintenance ways to get rid of it so I don't have to own a lawn mower). So no, in fact it's not "manicured spotless lawn or literally shove everyone into apartments".
- CalRobert 3y agoWell, considering that it's illegal to build apartments or condos in most places I don't think you have to worry about that.
- indigo0086 3y agoBan disiguous trees
- reidjs 3y agoWhy people would put so much effort into growing useless grass is astonishing to me. You can grow anything there and you choose grass? Why? I assume it has to do with an HOA? Or aesthetics? Or it’s easier?
- brookst 3y agoAesthetics, good for kids to play on, easy to maintain. I’m not a fan myself but I get it.
- madduci 3y agoIf you have small kids that like to play outside, you would likely have grass, not trees or something else that is more wild.
- mcpackieh 3y agoRidiculous, kids love trees. But also, rats and therefore snakes love leaves, as does fire. If you live in the woods the kids will love it, but you still have to keep leaves away from the perimeter of the house.
- galleywest200 3y agoYou would let a small child just run around in the forest? OP said small. Where I live the woods have bears and mountain cats. A teenager may be able to navigate those dangers successfully but a small child, toddler age, would not do so alone.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> You would let a small child just run around in the forest? Yes of course! My entire childhood was spent running around in the woods. Bears and mountain lions are rare and most of them are more scared of you than the other way around. No more than a small handful of people are attacked by those across the entirety of North America, the last time a child was killed by a mountain lion was about 25 years ago. There were only two or three fatal mountain lion attacks against kids in the 90s, two in the 80s, and three in the 70s.. there are less than 20 of these kind of incidents in the entire 20th century across all of North America. Why the hell would you bring up such an unlikely risk? And fatal bear attacks are only marginally more common, they're still incredibly rare. Your kids are many thousands of times more likely die from choking on food than by getting attacked by an animal in the woods, do you ban grapes in your house? How did you become so cowardly? Forbidding kids from playing in the woods is absolutely pathetic, reading your comment left me with a feeling of visceral disgust.
- djha-skin 3y agoPretty sure driving 1-2 ton cars every day and flying planes do a way better job of destroying the planet than mowing the lawn with a small four-cycle motor once a week.
- giantrobot 3y agoLawns use ridiculous amounts of water for zero agricultural productivity.
- djha-skin 3y agoThis has some merit in the mountain west, but back east nobody waters their lawn, it just comes from the sky for free. (I know some people have sprinklers, but having grown up in Chicago, I can tell you that they're not strictly necessary.)
- losvedir 3y agoChicago lawn here. As a point of principle I don't water the lawn. It sometimes goes dormant for a bit in the summer - I don't mind the yellow look since the park is yellow and it feels like it fits the general hot, dry spell - but springs back to lush and green once the rains come again.
- 4death4 3y agoNo, they don’t. The vast majority of water is used for agricultural and industrial purposes. Even if you completely eliminated lawns, you wouldn’t make a meaningful dent in water consumption.
- simonw 3y agohttps://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/the-american-obsession-with-lawns/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practic... says "Lawns are the most grown crop in the U.S." - would be interesting to see more detailed data on that.
- echelon 3y ago> Eliminating home lawn is probably one of the singular things that would significantly slow down our destruction of the planet This is a city opinion that not many people in suburbia would agree with. It's also motivated by West coast water shortages, something that those on the East coast can't relate to as easily. It's a lot like the /r/fuckcars argument. It's a great idea inside a single population of like-minded users, but there's an unspoken silent majority whose lifestyle and entire world doesn't work in the same way.
- krupan 3y agoLawns are beautiful and useful. Are we not allowed to expend resources for beautiful and useful things?
- guiriduro 3y agoPublic parks are too. If you've got reasonable access to one, do you need the other? Or rather, is a private lawn something that should be taxed (much?) more heavily where a park is available within 15 mins walk? And should urban planners take that into account, and developments be penalised when they don't?
- r3trohack3r 3y agoHa, within a 15 minute walk? I’m going to guess you don’t have kids. So parents need to pack everything up daily for their kids to go play (at least for the first N years of life until they’re independent enough to go do a 15min walk on their own) or be taxed for it? I have a public park across the street from me. I spent $20k converting the side of my house into a playground for my kids. The QoL impact has been massive. It’s gated in by a 6ft perimeter brick wall with a door that we put in that opens from the kitchen. In the morning, my 2 year old can unlock the door to the side yard and go play before we even wake up. The side yard lets our kids play without us needing to supervise. It gives them strong early independent play and gives us space to get life sorted out while they are entertaining themselves (chores, bills, etc.). The park across the street does none of that, it is not interchangeable in any meaningful way.
- campboy 3y agoSounds like you’d prefer homeowners to be against public parks; I guess you’d rather folks without their own private property not have access to open spaces?
- guiriduro 3y agoWhat gave you that impression?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lr4444lr 3y agoReally? More than manufacturing or vehicular emisssion, and agricultural waste? Color me deeply skeptical of that priority...
- zo1 3y agoIf it was cheaper, we'd pay someone to rake and broom the leaves around. But we decided human labour is worth more than that, so hey the free market found a solution for you. Maybe you should add a leaf-blower tax to fix that? Maybe similar to carbon credits we can have noise-credits?
- SkyPuncher 3y agoMy yard is hardly manicured, but it’s an amazing place for my kids to play. I have to blow the leaves, otherwise they collect too deep to be able to use the yard. They get blown into he woods on the back half of the yard where the decompose and fertilizer the dirt.
- superchroma 3y agoI cut my grass myself using an electric mower and use it to make compost. We would use a leaf blower on our property even without grass for what it's worth. We have an electric blower too, which is a lot quieter than our neighbor's petrol one.
- panarky 3y ago> home lawn -> destruction of the planet Your citations state that lawns consume 60% of household water, implying that this leads inevitably to environmental catastrophe. But household water usage is a small fraction of total fresh water usage. In a dry region like California, households consume only 10% of total fresh water [0]. In regions that get more rain, households consume a much smaller fraction than that. If the government could somehow force every household to convert every lawn into cactus and prevent every resident from bathing more than once per week, would that delay the "destruction of the planet" by any measurable amount? [0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
- namaria 3y agoClose to 5% total water usage being just to keep the vanity ground colorful seems like a huge waste.
- panarky 3y agoMany things are wasteful. An equivalent amount to grow almonds for export also seems wasteful. Do either of these wasteful uses of water constitute an existential risk to the planet?
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoYes both contribute to the depletion of the freshwater resources available. This is a well documented problem