California bans the sale of all small off-road internal combustion engines

For example: For a number of years Palo Alto has had a law about gas leaf blowers (Ordinance No. 4634, I think). The "easy" way around it is to use an electric leaf blower. Where do you plug in an electric leaf blower in Palo Alto? Probably the same place as where the public trash can is: Nowhere. You've got to use the customer's house. Not every customer has an outdoor socket. Try explaining that to a customer: The city you live in voted to 1) Make me plug in my outdoor tool inside your house. 2) Use your electricity instead of my gas. 3) Make the job take longer. Helping a customer "understand" why they're going to see an extra dollar on their electricity bill and inconvenience every 2-4 weeks is harder than you'd think. The people of Palo Alto don't like being told they're wrong or what they have chosen costs more money. I have seen with my own eyes people forego service because of a $10 monthly increase after multiple of great service.

Long story short: People like to vote against themselves. People are not reasonable.

Or maybe take it up with the Bigleaf Maples clogging up the storm drain front of your house causing water to slowly creep up your poorly graded property on Middlefield Rd.

Or maybe the pine needles that turn brown and look like garbage on your lawn.

A lot of leaves suck to deal with. Blowing is the what the property owners want.

1. Doing good is hard.

2. This is hard.

3. Therefore it is good.

Electric weedwhacker (I'm assured these don't exist on the West Coast, but they do have an alternative called the "weedeater") barely has any strength behind it.

Will it knock down some tall spots in the hard spots of a non-artificially-planned backyard? Yes.

Will it be quick? No.

Can you edge with it? I've tried, but the lack of power means the cut is never clean.

Same with the leafblowers.

Gasoline-powered? That side-walk and driveway are free of leaves in 5 minutes tops.

Electric? I'm slowly walking around like a bozo for a good 15-20 minutes just to get the bigger parts. It's almost impossible to get all the nooks and crannies with the hand-blower.

Same with the trimmers.

Hell. Those small Maruyama trimmers are all you need. Doesn't matter if you need a longer reach: a ladder and one-handing it always does the trick. Admittedly, they're also used as pruners (and they're damn good at it).

I've tried those pole-trimmers, and the lack of power was palpable. You can barely even cut through Rhododendron without slamming that thing into the branches.

Electric? Forget about it. They barely cut through my regular-variety hedge.

Perhaps the "high-powered" stuff has spoiled me forever -- and I do miss them dearly. What I don't miss is my hands going numb, and a persistent ringing in my ears.

I've also grown to be a fan of the "old" New England property landscapes and yards. The ones on the West Coast always seemed so artificial.

What it takes is government regulation.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2GhoDQa6tA

The Results During the FTP 75 test, exhaust gas from the vehicle's tailpipe is captured and analyzed by laboratory-grade equipment that's so expensive it makes the Kentucky Derby look like the Pinewood Derby. This lab equipment measures all kinds of compounds coming out of the tailpipe but the three we will focus on are those with which EPA and CARB are primarily concerned, namely, non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO).

(then there's a table listing the results...)

If you add a catalytic converter etc. you could cut most of it. But then the engine would be much bulkier and more expensive.

Also note your ride on mower (and other small IC things) don't have catalytic converters or anything at all to manage emissions, so the stuff coming out the exhaust is multiple orders of magnitudes worse - especially for the user who is standing right there breathing it in.

It isn't just about gallons consumed per hour, it's about what comes out the exhaust.

The car should also have a more efficient combustion, due to all the electronics, along with a catalytic converter to meet the emission requirements.

Note they talk about hydrocarbon emissions, not just CO2.

The cheap two cycle engine does exhaust and injection in the same cycle. Inevitably a large fraction of the injected fuel is also exhausted. How that tired back to green house gases I'm not totally sure, but it's certainly very bad for your lung health to breathe it!

1) The lubricating oil is mixed into the fuel and burned in the combustion cycle. The combustion products of this oil are not clean.

2) They combine exhaust and intake into a single "stroke", i.e. the downstroke after ignition, which can result in unburnt aerosolized fuel escaping with the exhaust.

Additionally, fuel injection systems can typically achieve better emissions than carburetors can. AFAIK small two-strokes (and some four-strokes like small outboard motors, etc.) are largely the last bastion of carburetors in engines manufactured today.

Personally, I'd advocate a rake.

Making them illegal didn't seem to help in LA where the gardeners still defiantly use the gas powered blowers with zero repercussions. Hopefully you'll have better success outlawing them in your community.

That particular model of leaf blower with the backpack is fairly powerful, and the reviewer notes it pushes more air than the gas powered one he is using. However, a number of comments mention that the gas powered blower is much more powerful and that the reviewer is biased, which may be apparent from his early praise for the electric model.

The big issue is that the electric blower's runtime is limited. He gets 22 minutes out of a full battery using it "normally", which takes 1 hour 40 minutes to charge on the standard charger, and 42 minutes on the fast charger. He concludes that electric is better in every way for homeowners, and there's no reason to go back to gas unless you are a commercial user (presumably due to the battery limitations).

Where I live you can't really leaf-blow anyway, as the leaves are almost always wet and heavy.

Electric leaf blowers average 65db, 4 strokes are 70-80db, while 2 strokes average 90db. Where 10db is roughly double the "noise" I think this qualifies for "significantly"

(source: I switched to Ego battery electric yard equipment from gas powered ones a few years ago).

My landscaper recently told me the gas ones are still far more effective. I assume he would know? They go from site to site every day, I’m guessing they don’t have time to charge and want the best tool for their job as all of us do.

You’re talking changing a hour job into potentially longer from battery swaps and asking for plugs, etc.

And in general the gas ones are cheaper but that is getting closer.

I'm all for picking the tools that work best for your situation. But don't say, "And I hereby decree that everyone will now use this technology."