Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – According to NYT if you maintain a nice garden lawn and mow it regularly you are upholding a symbol of racism and demonstrating your disregard for your personal carbon footprint.
The Great American Lawn: How the Dream Was Manufactured
America’s manicured front lawns represent the pride of homeownership, and the cultivation of community. But the ways we maintain them risk hurting the environment and contributing to climate change. So why do we even have lawns in the first place? We traced their history, starting with early European colonists.
Below, you’ll find some of the sources that helped us the most and other tidbits we weren’t able to fit into the video.
Aug. 9, 2019
America’s manicured front lawns represent the pride of homeownership, and the cultivation of community. But the ways we maintain them risk hurting the environment and contributing to climate change. So why do we even have lawns in the first place? We traced their history, starting with early European colonists.
Below, you’ll find some of the sources that helped us the most and other tidbits we weren’t able to fit into the video.
…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/video/lawn-grass-environment-history.html
The video starts by blaming colonists for importing foreign seed to feed their cattle, quickly moves to dissing George Washington for popularising manicured European style lawns maintained by slaves, then blames mechanised lawnmowers and advances in the printing press like colored advertising prints for contributing to climate change.
Low cost home loans for WW2 veterans are also attacked because they encouraged the veterans to embrace the climate destroying American dream.
They even attack Roosevelt for for mowing his lawn, when reporters wanted to ask him questions.
What can I say? Dissing the dreams of the deplorables seems to be a liberal pastime these days, especially when liberals manage to work in a few environmental and climate themes. Accusing people who want a nice house and a nice lawn of indirectly supporting the memory of slavery is just an added bonus.
Liberals won’t be happy until we’re all living in caves – except the climate elite like themselves of course, who will still enjoy the full benefits of industrial civilisation because they believe their special mission entitles them to a few perks.
Update (EW): Updated the image to a picture of George Washington, who is attacked in the video for popularising the idea of manicured lawns maintained by slaves.
Lawns are actually good for the environment…
They promote soil hydration through the retention of water by protecting against over evaporation.
They sink CO2 from the atmosphere and replace it with controlled O2 and H2O release through photosynthesis.
Mowing them and subsequently composting their trimmings further sinks the carbon by transforming it into soil.
What’s not to like
Also in many regions creates a defensible perimeter against wildfire.
-Lawns dampen road noises.
-Lawns trap dust throw up by vehicles traveling along an adjacent road, before it can blow into the house.
-Lawns, through transpiration, cool the air surrounding a dwelling , reducing the need for carbon-hungry air-conditioners (in Washington’s day, lawns, open-windows, shade-trees, high celings, and, for the ladies, a fliratiously fluttered hand-fan, were, collectively, the “air-conditioning” of the day).
-And for early-birds, a lawn provides a bracing daught of oxygen, in the morning, as the dawn’s early light gets the grass to makin’ breakfast. One of life’s enduring pleasures.
P. S. Any doubt about the cooling effect of grass–try stepping, barefoot, from a lawn to a sidewalk, on a hot summer day.
That is why they can into existence, the are also keep short to keep vermin away from the house. The collective stupidity we see today is allowing destructive wild fires destroy homes and disease infected pest to become problem. Add in the leftist enclaves on our west coast are now looking like third world cities, with modern shanty town. Shanty towns without basic hygiene facilities.
Oh, by the way I now live in Arizona, I do not have grass, I do have a large number of plants that are of the low or no water type. I believe far better to have the Arizona sun at work growing something, then just heating rocks.
Name the wildlife that live in lawns. Name the flowers the bees kind of appreciate. If they were chemical free, at least that wouldn’t happen. They are artificial. Might as well be growing palm trees.
Wildlife that livers in lawns…
Moles, Gophers, Field Mice, my cat, fleas, Ants, ground dwelling Wasps, Chinch bugs, Crickets, Sod Webworms, Beetles, Grasshoppers, aphids, Ladybird Beetles…
Numerous creatures inhabit lawns and if you leave milkweed in your garden you’re sure to see Monarch butterflies as they live on it.
Plus, as was pointed out, a well kept and manicured lawn surrounding your home makes an excellent fire break
All these things thrive in a monoculture. Okay.
A couple thousand square feet constitutes “mono-culture”?
Really?
I have a flower pot, in that flower pot is a single petunia. Is that also a mono-culture?
Rabbits at my place, plus Ravens and Grackles and other birds.
I will add in worms, and night crawler. The live below the yard, any good yard has trees place to shade the house and walkways in the summer. Trees are the home to birds. The flower beds are for flowers the flowers are for bees, all can be raised minimal amount of water, fertilizer or insecticides. My mother and her mother did the same. I learned to do the same. Not only when i was young did we had a lawn half the yard was a garden were most of the vegetables we ate came from. The garden was not watered as a rule. The only watering was the strawberries, my mother not water is rather amazing since at the time water in my home town was not metered. Oh by the way the garden was at least 60 by a 100 and most of my youth it was hand tilled by yours truly and my brothers.
Various species of bugs and worms, dandelions that I cannot seem immune to all my attempts at replacing them.
I have pictures of Deer in my backyard eating said lawn.
Try clover. Dandelions bloom early. Giving bees something to eat before the other stuff blooms.
I don’t like carefully manufactured and maintained lawns either, but we had White Ibis walking down the streets in small flocks, then foraging (poking their bills into the sand) through certain lawns. Would like to know what they find, as in the book they are listed with the waterbirds. They did to seem more common when it was wetter.
Rabbits love lawns, they eat the grass down to the roots.
My lawn is not a monoculture. It has every type of plant in the neighborhood that thrives when it is trimmed to <75mm high. Something like 70 different species, plus a like number of bugs and small animals.
The park behind the house features maybe 30 acres of flood plain. It has hundreds of tall trees of various ages, half a dozen species that flourish in shade, and quite of number of widely dispersed small plants that grow well in shade. Hardly a tropical jungle of species, which is a bit of a myth.
Tropical rain forests are largely soil deserts. They exist by recycling the soil over very short time spans to keep the forest growing and reproducing. The soils are generally good for only one or two crops before they are depleted and abandoned.
I have a lot of clover in my lawn. The bees and deer love it.
Sowing a breed of flora that ruminants will like, and keeping those to mow it down, and subsequently eating them, well there must be something wrong with that…somehow.
Let’s see, the sun shines on the plant, the plant grows, removes CO2 from the atmosphere in the process, the critters eat the plants, you eat the critters. Trying to find the problem.
Marinated lamb is delicious.
Precisely what I do. I have plants, bushes and trees too! Imagine that! I am certainly a co2 negative, but I am trying to go positive dammit!
“What’s not to like” … trying to mow a lawn with a handmower after a weeks rain.
Handmower. That’s your problem right there.
This here is a lawn mower!
I will add in worms, and night crawler. The live below the yard, any good yard has trees place to shade the house and walkways in the summer. Trees are the home to birds. The flower beds are for flowers the flowers are for bees, all can be raised minimal amount of water, fertilizer or insecticides. My mother and her mother did the same. I learned to do the same. Not only when i was young did we had a lawn half the yard was a garden were most of the vegetables we ate came from. The garden was not watered as a rule. The only watering was the strawberries, my mother not water is rather amazing since at the time water in my home town was not metered. Oh by the way the garden was at least 60 by a 100 and most of my youth it was hand tilled by yours truly and my brothers.
When you say hand mower. Are you referring to the now powered? If you are you do have my greatest respect. If it with a hand pushed non self propelled power momower well when I was a teen and preteen that what I used to put clothes on my back growing up poor I clothes myself since I was thirteen with the addition of hand made down of course. The primary method was lawn care, basicly mowing about a dozen lawns a week at a buck and a half each time, raking and snow shoveling were the fall winter and spring money earning methods post paper boy.
Do they even make push mowers anymore? Push mowers (I’m assuming that is what you are talking about) are for small lawns, mowed at least once a week if not more often.
Wow! Now I am a racist for owning my home and having a lawn (it is green!)
Funny, this arrives just before I am about to go out and mow my lawn. Nice to know that in addition to destroying the environment I’ll be exercising my racism as well.
Ditto Toasters.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/10/eu-to-launch-kettle-and-toaster-crackdown-after-brexit-vote2/
Orwell had it right.
So it’s ok to have a racist mowed lawn, as long as I have a very small electric mower?
Not sure how EU lawmakers decided that making everything take longer was going to save energy?
Sounds like the same ‘gotta start somewhere’ thinking that called moving the clock hands twice a year ‘Daylight Savings Time’
This article in the NYT is extremely racist. It assumes that ‘People of Colour’ do not want to have or are incapable of making nicely manicured lawns for their houses.
There is a neighborhood about a quarter of a mile from house. It is largely inhabited by PoC and has been so since it was built in the 1940s. The people who live there are middle class. It is a nice neighborhood of single family homes. The lawns are mowed and there are many well tended gardens.
PoC is exactly what?
People of Colour … obviously.
“People of color”, in American English. We are no longer allowed to say “Colored People”, as in the “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People”, aka NAACP.
The term was never a very good description for Americans with sufficient African ancestry to be discriminated against on the basis of their pigmentation or other physical traits. But it was preferable to alternatives which are now properly considered vile ethnic epithets.
It is perfectly OK and socially acceptable in the US of A for the “People of color” to refer to themselves as “Colored People”, …… including a few other of their chosen “defining” terms, ……. but all “Non-colored People” absolutely, positively must refer to the “People of color” as being African-American(s).
Yes. The NYtimes is racist. Spread the word.
What Dr. Sowell called the soft racism of low expectations.
This is one I can buy into. I stopped putting in all the effort to keep fescue growing in my area and let the lawn revert to bermuda grass (aka wire grass). Now I can stop mowing and let the lawn revert to central Virginia forest, replete with weeds and poison ivy.
I can signal my non-racist and environmental virtue to all the neighbors. No more chemical warfare and trying to find a kid who will deign to accept the $70/hr rate to cut the lawn when I can’t. What a great idea.
I have an old mattress and broken washing machine that I could drop off in your yard to really stick it to the bourgeois.
However, my Ford F-150 is still running well, so it will still be a few years until I can prop it up in your yard on some cinder blocks.
Until then, I salute your “Greene” yard! /sarc off
Always remember a good Okie uses the junk in his yard.
My grandfather, driving into Barstow Ca.
Depends on whther your municipal bylaws and homeowner association allows non racist unmaintained natural ground cover.
I take great comfort in the knowledge that there is such abundant food crop land in North America that we can afford to grow and enjoy lawns.
If we were to avoid anything that was once connected with slavery, cotton would be problematic as well. The NYT once again gets it totally wrong, because they don’t really get it, at all.
There’s nothing like a beautiful well watered and fertilized, lush, green, and nicely mowed lawn with not a blade of grass out of place. I’ve always looked forward to them every summer after a long dreary and cold winter.
I’ve got lots of leftist marxists up near Macalaster College that have no lawns at all. Just a bunch of wild sh#t. None of them have kids of course. To each his own (oh oh…did I us ‘his?) but unfortunately the nosy know it all leftist marxist nincompoop will foist themselves into your situation as best they can…and if it takes the strong hand of the govt to get their way, so be it!!
Why do they care if people mow grass ? Don’t they smoke it ? 😉
Which releases more CO2 ?
In fact, it was the last administration that exempted grass from oversight and moderation.
Did you ever notice that Leftists’ definition of “liberty” is whatever THEY say it is. Which is the exact opposite of what liberty means. The U.S. was founded on giving citizens the freedom to live life as they desire, and respect that same right for other citizens. The new “socialist” progressive branch of party activism is anti-freedom and anti-liberty.
What gets me about this loonscape vision of the future is just how the hell do they see themselves as ‘liberals’ let alone ‘progressives’? Progressing towards what sort of Green utopia? You mean Soylent Green? Mowing down your neighbours so you can decorate your cave with their bones?
Using water, herbicides, fertilizer. Good idea. A monoculture.
Do you have something against modern science?
You also have a really weird definition of mono-culture. Do you often proclaim the right to define words however you want?
You’re right! Tomorrow, I’m paving my lawn over and painting it green. No more herbicides, fertilizer or water.
Grass in most of North America can be grown without any of them. A properly maintain yard is self weeding and need little if any additional water. You have to willing to allow it to go dormant(brown) in August if you live in the north. In my 66 years of life I basicly never watered an extablished lawn. I also used very little fertilizer and chemicals to maintane my grass. A well maintane yard is a vital part of human health. Cut grass does not support fire and most flea carring vermin.
You know, I get the feeling someone at the New York Times is tired of maintaining their lawn…
More likely they live in an urban canyon along with the other “termite people”. No smear intended, its just different lifestyle where population density has crowded out green things so they have no concept other than in a zoo or park surrounded by even more termite mounds.
The NYT has been outed as telling their reporters to drop the Russian collusion storie and focus on Trump and his supporters are racist stories. This is one of many to come.
As someone subjected to nosy and intrusive neighbours who judge my lawn full of native wildflowers in a way designed to increase my stress and threaten me to comply with their perception of my need to mow my lawn, I find, for once, I am in complete agreement with the climate change alarmists. I intend to print this letter and send it to my local town authority next time they send me one of their “mow you lawn or we’ll do it and bill you” letters.
Good comment. Stepford wives lawns. I added some clover to mine recently. I have wildflowers on a hill on my yard, which I no longer have to mow.
Ragnaar reminds me of those urban environmentalists. The closest he’s come to actual nature was the dog poo he stepped in this morning.
I have regularly tried to explain to my wife that long grass with tops are also flowers … she doesn’t seem to agree.
Can someone check on the mansions of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc, etc and see if they are surrounded by lush, green swards of grass or xeriscapes? I’m betting on the former.
I guess parks and recreation areas have to go to. Just weeds and dirt from here on out.
Instead of the privately owned “lush green lawns”, the New York Times should have started their “badmouthing” of Central Park, ……. which is the fifth largest park in New York City, covering 843 acres (341 ha).
New York City has 28,000 acres (113 km²) of “green grass growing” municipal parkland.
To wit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_parks
Lawns are not diverse. They are overwhelmingly green.
Lawns are good for local thermodynamic moderation, and are a negative feedback for the global [average] warming statistic.
Perhaps the problem stems from relative humidity. Lawns have been categorized as a probable anthropogenic global warmer and unfairly libeled/labeled as diversitist (i.e. color judgment).
That said, go green… plant.
It seems like my liberal friends are always on Prozac and depressed and unhappy, maybe because the US is not a socialist utopia.
I love to laugh at liberals, and BTW here is a funny one from Paul Joseph Watson, making fun of Soycialists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1AXReZgFxw
It wasn’t too long ago that all these “comrades” got put into a nice, soft and white padded room…Oh for the good old days……
Anyone listen to NPR in the US? I do for the laughs I get from it. They are obsessed with of course climate change but they also constantly bang the drum of how Negros are and were oppressed, on PBS too, entire shows about slavery and oppression back in the Jim Crow days, they go on and on about it, they can not take their minds off of it, what is with them?
One thing that Liberals fail to understand is that all their fantasies are supported by a strong economy. Take away that support and the whole scheme falls to nothing. You cannot subsidize anything if you have no tax basis for generating the needed subsidies. So how do you expect to continue with wind and solar without government subsidies when the economy collapses due to your misguided GND? A solid explanation of how you support all the perks the Left wants when businesses are destroyed would be really helpful.
Sorry Bob, the left can’t think beyond the next 18 months…..
A well-maintained lawn works to keep down all kinds of pests. From chiggers and ticks to Norway mice and field mice and even rats. The presence of mice and vermin then attract predators such as snakes, feral cats, and even coyotes.
Leave it to an urban elite to campaign for for a lifestyle similar to the homeless in NYC and San Francisco or like the rundown sections of Baltimore!
I wonder what it is going to take to get thru to this libtårds…
• I keep a lawn because I like it. Period.
• I keep the flowers weeded because they grow prettier that way. Period.
• I keep the hedges trimmed because they don’t snag our clothes. Period.
• I keep my car washed, because I like it. Period.
• I keep our house painted, to protect against dry rot, bugs, damage. Period.
• I keep our yard clean, because I prefer it to clutter. Period.
• I use a clothesline, because free-hot-dry air is great. Period.
• I dug a well, and water with it, because it’s cheaper. Period.
• I put up PV solar panels, because of outrageous PG&E bills. Period.
• I drive a 3 ton American truck, because I use it to-purpose. Period.
The bottom line is that I do these things because I want to. Because there’s not one dâhmned thing about any of them which is remotely subservient to notions of colonialism, slavery, micro-climate, personal ecology, jurisprudence, flaunted wealth, flippy fad or other foolishness. Its also why I cannot conceive of living in one of the Orwellian prisons known as knee-to-jowl packed gated homeowner committee governed compounds. Don’t need them, and their foppish rules, infinitessimal regulations, power-grabs, or other galling practices.
Conservatıve-Libertarian, to the core, I am.
Got my guns, hunt with them, and defend my property when needed.
After all, where I live, we have 180 pound mountain lions, 50 pound coyotes, endless hawks, hoot owls, bemasked raccoons, feral dogs, feral cats, and far too many ankle-twisting gophers to count. ‘Cept for the lions, .22 LR subsonic takes care of them all. Gophers get my PCP air rifle. Snakes, a snake-stick and a pair of hand clippers. Snakes don’t do so well without their heads.
NYT can suck my proverbial snake stick.
LOL.
Just saying,
GoatGuy ✓
Goat Guy, You don’t get it: You want all that because you are a racist. In fact wanting all that proves you are a racist and getting it exposes you as a white supremacist. Woke up!
I’ll plant what I want, where I want, when I want. I’ll mow, fertilize, apply weed killer, an kill moles as I see fit.
To the dweebs at the ‘Old Grey Lady’ NYT: Kiss My Grass!
This piece would have been better received if it didn’t intentionally try to make a ludicrous connection between lawns and racism.
With regards to contributing to climate change. Since the last 40 years have featured the best weather/climate for life on this planet since the Medieval Warm Period, 1,000 years ago and the increase in the beneficial gas, CO2 has resulted in a massively positive response in plants/crops that were in CO2 starvation mode a century ago.
Ironically, it’s also causing lawns and landscaping plants to grow MUCH faster and greener…..which is the actual main effect from the increase in CO2………the planet greening up.
Pick your plant(s) at this link with thousands of studies to see how it does better with CO2 enriched air:
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php
So its not really lawns that are affecting climate change but the benefits of climate change that are affecting lawns.
The relevant point is this. Is the aesthetic appeal of a well groomed lawn worth the work, money and wasted resources(in places that don’t have an over abundance of water, this is a waste of that resource which is better used for crops or more essential needs)?
In areas that have water supplies that will never run low……….it’s justified.
If you live in the Plains and use Ogallala aquifer water to maintain a green/lush lawn, you are wasting a precious resource with a limited supply.
Where I live in central England UK, I have never had to water my lawns.
I have never considered a lawn had any racist dimension to it…. who in their right mind would?
“See you in a while darling, I am going out to mow the racist patch..”
What is happening in the world, when a previously respectable news paper runs clic bait stories rather than stories worthy of the history of the paper?
We live in puzzling times.
I have a rather tiny patch of lawn, which has been invaded by violets. I enjoy the purple florets of the violet in the Spring, and once they’ve reached peak, I mow them down and let the clover start to blossom. Clover being a nitrogen fixing plant means that I get the bennies of that, and i let the leaves fall and mulch them with the mower in the fall, which puts nutrients back into the soil. So no artificial this or that is involved in my tiny patch of lawn, and my geraniums – a weed that’s been domesticated by hoomans – make my front steps look quite cheerful and pretty. I even use an electric mower instead of gas-powered because it’s such a small space.
I’m sure that this will make the Greenbeans and their holier-than-thou followers GREEN WITH ENVY. They’re just a nasty little bunch of jealous brats who don’t like anything that’s real and worth having.
Eric Worrall
“Aug. 9, 2019
America’s manicured front lawns represent the pride of homeownership, and the cultivation of community. But the ways we maintain them risk hurting the environment and contributing to climate change. So why do we even have lawns in the first place? We traced their history, starting with early European colonists.
Below, you’ll find some of the sources that helped us the most and other tidbits we weren’t able to fit into the video.”
Why is this repeated ?
Mowing around a residence was (and is) a means of vermin control. Mice , voles, and other pests prefer longer growth where they are not such an easy target for predators such as hawks, owls, and such. Lesson: If you want more vermin near (or in) your residence, let the grass and weeds grow.
Indeed, overgrown yards are Sanctuaries of Vermin and Bad for Public Health.
But as long as their maintenance or lack thereof doesn’t create a public health hazard, property owners should be at liberty to manage their green land as they see fit. And no, being aesthetically unpleasing to neighbors (an “eyesore”) is not a public health issue.
“Keeping turf from turning brown wastes water; people use too much pesticide and herbicide, toxic chemicals that can contaminate the fish we eat and water we drink. And keeping lawns at a reasonable height burns fossil fuels, releasing greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/another-downside-to-your-classic-green-lawn-22716743/#tvmJzDlvkCr1IkE0.03
There are alternatives. I added a bit of clover this year in my lawn’s bare spots. It took at a high rate. Does your lawn bring you happiness as the most conforming plebe on your block? Plant some wildflowers and clover and tell city hall to leave you alone. This will not result in anarchy. I promise.
Here’s a nice option to using fossil fuel for lawn maintenance
Also available in electric
I use a gas powered one. The idea is to mow less. More time to spend on Facebook and WUWT.
Funny, I thought the reason was to not use fossil fuels
If there are so few problems in the US that this complaint makes it into the NYT, then Trump’s America must be in really great shape.
The progressive addiction demands that something must always be WRONG, so that said wrong, real or perceived, can be protested. It’s how the social justice addict gets his virtue-signal fix.
Oh, is that what it is?
I just thought they couldn’t let a day go by without killing, stealing, or destroying something that kind, good-hearted people enjoy, maintain at their own expense, and willingly share with those who pass by.
You know–a day without a stomp-down is a day without sunshine!
I can’t name one thing the so-called Progressives have ever built that benefits anyone.
I guess you could say all the unrest and violence they promote helps the MSM keep the lights on.
So I wonder what all the “racists” in Scarsdale and Marin County, CA think of their new status in society. Are they going to let their properties got to pot now to prove they are not racists?
I have to protest. I get most of my exercise pushing a lawnmower around. It’s good for me and good for the lawn and good for the neighborhood. It increases property values, or rather keeps property values from dropping.
In the city, if you let your lawn get overgrown, city officials will come around and give you a fine and make you mow your lawn.
All these people cultivating the world as if it’s their own property makes me irritable. Didn’t you get the memo? You didn’t build that! So just leave all that dirt alone to take its natural shape, slide, flood, blow away, or whatever it desires, and get out of its way — you intruders.
And by the way, which Roosevelt is being referred to? While Teddy carried a big stick, didn’t you know that Franklin couldn’t even stand up without metal leg braces (polio) unless there was a podium to hold on to, and often his son or someone else at his side (once positioned upright and before the cameras started rolling) to prevent a topple? I don’t think he was one to be faulted as a mower of turf.
I mow our “grass”, which is actually a hodgepodge of probably a couple dozen varieties of grasses, plus “weeds” and wildflowers. We love dandelions, and good thing too, because we have them in abundance. I mow using a DR Mower, which has a blade height of 4″ four times – in early June, then perhaps a month later, then some time in August, then perhaps mid-September. The grass gets to be 3′ tall at times, which the DR cuts with ease. I never water, and the grass never browns, nor do I use any kind of chemicals. Life is good. Different strokes, I guess. I try not to laugh at people with the manicured lawns, out there slaving away.
“I mow our “grass”, which is actually a hodgepodge of probably a couple dozen varieties of grasses, plus “weeds” and wildflowers.”
That’s what my “lawn” looks like. 🙂
Those of us who have lived away from cities figured out that mud was not desirable and brush was outright dangerous.
I always thought American lawns were mowed to cut down on ticks and cutting down on habitats for various vermin.
Possible trivia:
The clearcutting of tall grasses, weeds, brush and trees from around the perimeter of early American homes was a “safety precaution” to dissuade and prevent criminal acts and to better protect oneself from (native American) Indian, French and/or English that were intent on “killing” the inhabitants.
The perimeter around said homes became “yards” when the grass was permitted to grow to protect from mud and dirt from being “tracked” into the home. The grass was cut noninfrequently via use of sickle, scythe or livestock.
And then the “yards” became know as manicured “lawns” after this invention, to wit:
GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
Not again. We heard the same thing in the seventies and were told we had to raise corn instead to avoid starvation. They stopped mowing the public lawns in Boston and found out about rats and snakes. Not mentioned is lawns give you a clear line of fire. Indians.
“They even attack Roosevelt for for mowing his lawn, when reporters wanted to ask him questions.” I assume this must have been Theodore R – I can’t imagine FDR mowing his own lawn.
Does the NYT still conduct that annual competition of ‘Holidays from Hell’ where contestants nominate holidays that were total disasters?
I would suggest they commence a new competition -“Most Unbelievable Climate Story.”
“The Great American Lawn” is a modest entrant.
I am running a private competition myself and recording outstanding entrants.
Over the last decade the clear winner was, I believe, in The Guardian where the author claimed that when Aliens arrive and see what we have done to the environment they will exterminate everyone on Earth.
It was not written as a parable.
A leading contender for 2019 was in The Times, Saturday, April 6 last, “Climate change drives confused walruses to deaths from clifftops”. That episode was fully debunked here (WUWT, passim) and by Dr.Susan Crawford.
Another leading contender was Time Magazine’s cover story on June 24 last, “Our Sinking Planet” telling the alleged fate of Tuvalu, Fiji and other Pacific Islands from rapidly rising sea levels. The cover featured a photo of U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a suit standing in the ocean at Tuvalu with water up to his knees, looking suitably lugubrious. I am keeping the edition as a souvenir.
There is also the Newsweek (?) lead story with front page photo of water half way up the Statue of Liberty.
This is another example of why liberals should not be voted into power.
This is exactly what the leader/creators of The Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, thought.
The owning and care of a well kept lawn is *exactly* one of the reasons Qutb gave as to why the west must be destroyed.
Why?
Do they prefer miles and miles of sand dunes?
Sheep and geese were used for centuries in Europe and China to keep lawns mown. And you could eat them. Try munching on your lawn mower.
~>ValidateYour ><RightsCarry!<~
Geese reputedly saved Rome from a night attack by the Gauls in 390BC by cackling to give the alarm.
I don’t know what the neighbours would think, and geese leave an awful mess on the grass.
A current fad in the UK is to manage all or part of the lawn as a hay meadow.
Sown with a mixture of grasses and wild flowers, it is allowed to grow until the flowers have set seed and then cut with a hand or mechanical scythe and the cut grass allowed to dry until the seed has fallen out, then removed and composted. The grass is then cut a couple of times before the winter.
When we have a dry time in the summer we set the mower an inch higher until we get enough rain to get the grass growing again.
Last year and this year we have had dry spells in June with the lawn going quite brown. Once the rain came it has been greened up again quite nicely.
That reminds me, I’ll have to get a catalytic converter fitted to my lawnmower.
Will your wife enjoy that….?
Not to mention the (obviously) Nazi-like use of child slave labour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If0klxxixjQ
One weeps a flood.
I’m struggling to work out the logic here …
But, our lawn is currently quite bare after having a pile of insulation on it, because I’ve had a two year project to dramatically increased the insulation of our house. And my son also is home from University and has decided that our tree is too tall – which means we now have a stack of firewood ready to burn – but if last winter is anything to go by, the house is now so cosy that it will get far too hot if we ever light the fire!
… I guess all this insulation will be seen by the climate cult as me perpetuating the slave trade.
As long as the washing machine is Energy Star rated, and the mattress still has that tag, it should be fine.
But maybe a Prius on blocks would be more enviro than the F150.
Yet more demonizing of white folk.
Does not matter what you do they just hate you.
It adds a new meaning to the thought of being put to the green sward.
Plantation owners had lawns, therefore lawns are racist.
Plantation owners lived in houses, therefore living in a house is racist.
I can’t tell if your serious, or pointing just how stupid this is…? I’ll spell it out for everyone else.
Plantation owners were European therefore all Europeans are racist.
Plantation owners sweat more in hot climates therefore all people that sweat more in hot climates are racist.
Plantation owners wore nicer clothes, therefore all people that wear nicer clothes are racist.
Plantation owners had straighter hair, therefore all people with straighter hair are racist.
The logical fallacy is the same in each argument here.
Interestingly, this logical fallacy is called the fallacy of generalization.
Also,
Long grass + kids or pets = lime disease. No one in New York apparently knows that.
There are eco-friendly ways to mow grass. Check out the automower by Husqvarna. 👍. It mows my grass for me, now I have time to comment on stupidity online 😘
Wild animals love my well trimmed and watered lawn. There are always rabbits feeding on it. Chipmunks scurry around. Another day, a doe gave birth to a fawn, right on my lawn, under a tree in front of the house.
Lawns, particularly the heavily manicured ones, are a form of status-signalling, although most won’t recognize it and few will admit it. Just look at how companies market lawn services and products — impress the neighbors, particularly if you can do it leisurely while others (service companies) do the work. Like the great manor owners of Europe, you have servants for that sort of thing.
Walls, particularly the heavily built ones, are a form of status signalling, although most won’t recognize it, and few will admit it. Just look at how companies market walled and gated communities with 24/7 armed security—rent a cops—so the rich elite, the Zuckerberg’s for example, can live fulfilled lives in safety, particularly while other service companies cater to their every want and need with servants for their walled manors. And while enjoying their lifestyles of the rich and famous they get to virtue signal about free trade in products and underage bodies for sex and borders without walls, and without eating food in a defunct franchise named Sambos. However, apparently you can still eat flap jacks in the original Sambos in Santa Barbara, ca.., if you should feel the need to be racist for a meal. Fortunately, president Barack was half white and half black, so Barack’s voters and supporters were only half racist.
There is an all-important difference between ‘servant’ and ‘slave’.
I sometimes pay someone to cut my hair or bring me a drink, or bring me a truckload of compost, or to provide electricity for a fan.
Doesn’t have any relation to slavery. My Norse ancestors may have taken slaves to sell in Turkey, pretty sure that was more about who had gold and who had swords, and who didn’t, than about race.
The people who are worried about using gasoline lawnmowers could always use an electric lawnmower if they want to cut down on the CO2 creation, because they feel CO2 is a problem.
I prefer to use an electric lawn mower because that’s what I used when I was a teenager. I considered it a privilege to mow the lawn at our house. It paid more than any other chore. It also gave a feeling of accomplishment when it was finished.
I like not having to haul/store gasoline, tune the mower, and struggle to get it to start in 100 degree weather when company is coming and the grass needs cutting. I did figure out that “watering” my blue jeans before I mowed was a great way to stay cool, even in 100 degree weather.
Good times, good times!
America is the melting pot of the world and every American knows it from experience. Exceptions are NOT the rule. But we’re immersed in a media-generated smoke & mirrors illusion and the climate change fraud is the worst of it. The entire democrat platform is EC0-FASCISM, built on the monster of big lies that carbon dioxide is a threat. And if we don’t clear the air of that TRULY absurd bullshit and soon, America WILL be replaced by a techno-totalitarian new world order. Know Thy Enemy.
Get rid of lawns and half of Floridas’s Black and Hispanic community lose their jobs
And ‘grossly hypocritical’ ……..
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/08/16/nyt-lawns-are-symbols-of-racism-and-bad-for-global-warming/#comment-2772665
This is so ridiculous that I can’t even comment. Oh wait, I just commented — I lied.
Lawn clippings make a great addition to my homemade compost heap, which helps immensely in conditioning the soil of my racist home vegetable gardens.
Pffft, the NYT. They are not liberals they are socialists. There is not a classical liberal bone within the entire Democratic Party actually…. They are Socialists right down to their red cotton socks.
As for lawns. Lawns cut down on the dust and give your children a safe place to play. In third world countries smoke and dust cause major health problems for children…. indeed you don’t have to go to a third world country to see that, just an aboriginal community and you’ll see kids playing in the dust, their eyes pink with conjunctivitis, snot streaming from their noses and pus in their ears…. all the consequence of dust, smoke, flies and bad hygiene.
Households with lawns are an indication that the society is smart enough to provide plentiful water for its citizens and motivated enough to be house proud and caring. Well kept lawns are a visual sign of an enterprising, functional society….. The absence of lawns and gardens is a sign of socialism and dysfunction.
Plus I prefer to see kids playing on lawns, than in the dust.
I’ve heard this anti lawn sentiment from Greenies before. It’s not new.
So we are labeled “Racist” if we have a lawn. I don’t understand. There are many people of color that have lawns.
Is someone trying to redefine “Racist”?
Lets see: Just to name a few, we have war on 1st, 2 nd and 4th Amendments. We have a war on being ‘White”, being a “Male”, being “Middle Class” “Being Rich” (Socialist definition of Rich: Someone who has a job.) What do progressive socialists really want? Personally I think progressive socialists want a world government not based on individual rights.
Orwell suggested that many socialists were less motivated by a love of the poor than a hatred of the rich.
Some aren’t overmuch concerned with bringing others up to their level, as with measuring inequality of outcomes and pulling down anyone more successful.
Equality through destruction, rather than construction.