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[Lawns] America's Favorite Environment-Decimating Crop
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
In America, we grow a lot of corn. Tons of corn. Tons and tons and tons of corn, to be more precise; last year was a record with over 360,000 metric tons of the stuff. We grow so much corn we just give it away or feed it to cows (a problem in and of itself), or give it as aid to foreign nations (again, problematic at times), or sell it for a laughably high margin in our movie theaters.
So think about the fact that corn production ain't got shit the production of America's top cash crop: grass. And no, not the fun kind of grass. I'm not talking Mary Jane, I'm talking St. Augustine. The US produces THREE TIMES of volume of its corn crop in surface grass. And for what? Lawns, mostly, and that isn't counting any lawns grown from seed laid down by the home owner. This is just sod I'm talking about. And sod takes a lot of upkeep. Let's go to the numbers.
- Residential lawn upkeep: 7 billion gallons of water DAILY
- Percentage of average water bill spent on outdoor use: 30-60%
- Pesticide use per acre residential/agriculture: 10/1
- Gasoline use for lawn care: 820 million gallons per year
Also, bear in mind that in many residential areas, the square footage of the property can be 50% or more taken up by landscaping. This is land that is typically not doing anything beyond being aesthetically pleasing. It's not growing produce, it's not providing a habitat for native wildlife, it's not providing shade, it's not really even producing the oxygen that trees do, as grass retains much more carbon by volume than trees.
So, maybe we should get rid of lawns. Generate more usable living space, decrease consumption of water and fossil fuels, decrease carbon emissions and increase oxygen production.
Or maybe we just come to terms with the new reality, like the Kardashians have shown us.
Atomika on
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Abolish the lawn system.
So are trees
I encourage those things
Plus all the fertilizer people use on their lawn gets washed off and flows out to the sea where it causes red tide. Lawns are bad.
But I'd like to propose an alternative - drought-resistant low-water lawns seeded with a mix of specially designed grass and various clovers. Just as soft, very resistant, builds good soil.
These are good reasons to take your kids to a park.
Not so much for everyone to have a tiny useless park.
What hath man wrought.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I am into market-based solutions, though, like smart meter laws. Many of the worst offending cities in California have flat rate water billing.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
trees
fact
Personally, I think that investment in anti-desertification is to be commended. That's what this is, correct? Right guys?
My dad has a lawn. A big one, in North Carolina.
What he did was use a desert-friendly grass that while not as deep green or luxe as a golf course its still barefoot friendly, and is able to water it either naturally or through collected rainwater in a reservoir that supplies his sprinklers.
On a particularly dry summer, it looked like this at its worst:
I think if people would be willing to make MINOR sacrifices in exchange for much lower environmental impact, everyone could be happy.
And if you literally live in the desert, maybe don't have a lawn.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
A big, big one is getting some local grasses and plants and stuff for the yard instead of trying to grow grass from New England in the deserts of Texas. My water bill will thank me.
Also, doges will adapt, new things to pee/poop on.
This is part of why I like smart meters. If your water is billed at a flat rate, there is no incentive to have desert grass vs Kentucky bluegrass. But if you learn that having water-intensive grass is going to cost you an extra $1000 per year...
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
As long as we leave enough for the little makers
The issue with that is that it's not like the water company is really investing in creating more water.
Especially golf courses.
Ehhhhhhhh kinda?
I mean, even if water is a finite zero-sum resource, charging for use is one of the basic solutions to tragedies of the commons, because it internalizes external costs and prevents mindless consumption.
But in some cases the water company may have the opportunity to invest in, say, desalinization, to increase water supply
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Up here in Yellowknife it's tough to keep a lawn.
So the golf course is this:
Astroturf tee-off and astroturf greens. Everything else is sand and scrubland.
Also you have situations like NYC building additional aquifers to increase capacity and reduce hardship during maintenance periods.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Not like they really can. Sure the world is 75% water, but most of it is salt water and desalination costs money.
Like, there's no reason not to have a lawn in Louisiana. There are some places that don't even meter water, they just charge you a flat fee for the maintenance etc.
So you want to ignore your kid but not take care of them. That doesn't sound any safer than those scary, scary woods.
Then again, I saw the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead's rim in person:
And while Grass cannot take all the blame for that particular looming crisis, y'all need to reconsider what you're dampening in the desert.
And my Parents' garden, while containing a lawn, also has flowers and small bushes and a small tree, some diversity basically.
I'm fond of vlogbrothers for trying to help me understand why grass is a thing where its thingdom should be reconsidered
what the shit, Quid?
This is needlessly antagonistic. Slow your roll, dude.
Why not? "Be back when the street lights come on" was and still is a thing.
Not when they're 4, bro.
Yeah, totally this.
That said, I do think that this issue is exacerbated by... differences in attitude... towards the suitability of collective resources. See skfm's statement about a park above. I don't want this to turn into a thread where we, once again, pile on our criticisms of skfm's lifestyle. It isn't really about skfm personally, because attitudes like "Can't just let your kid run around in the park while you make dinner though" are commonplace... even though I find them patently ridiculous.
The attitude that "I need my own lawn, parks aren't good enough" isn't terribly different from attitudes like "I need my own swimming pool, the YMCA isn't good enough" and "I need my own car, public transit isn't good enough." In some cases, those attitudes are correct, but that leads to further underinvestment in the community resources (because nobody wants to pay for something they're not going to use). Meanwhile we build residential developments that are both ecologically unsustainable and ultimately deleterious to personal health - mostly suburban, but sometimes urban (see: luxury condos with their own private dog walks, their own private pools, fucking individual elevators for each resident, etc).
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.