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Comment by GoOnThenDoTell | Hacker News Reader

ICE leaf blowers will get banned city by city

They'll get banned in the rich enclaves and immediately outlying wealthy suburbs and once those people are satisfied the movement will lose momentum because no other demographic has this problem high enough up on their list of problems to be actionable. And in 100yr when we all manipulate leaves in a different way because it's "just better" people will wonder where the obscure law came from.

Many, many things follow this pattern.

Oddly enough the wealthy suburbs are the ones where there are the most leaf blowing going on. Desire for manicured landscapes + money to pay for lanscaping services that normally service commercial properties = small armies of leafblowing workers deployed all over the place.

My neighborhood is a mix of income levels; those who do their own lawn use smaller equipment, and they use one at a time. The wealthy ones have a crew of 6-8 people with a loud mower, multiple weed whackers/trimmers and multiple leaf blowers all at the same time. On the noise level, I measured it to be as loud as a jet airplane taking off—except it lasts a whole hour.

I completely agree. It's a self imposed problem.

And don't forget that these same demographics have a large hand in the economic and regulatory situation that makes only highly efficient and mechanized professional landscaping viable.

I'd respect these people a lot more if they'd acknowledge and accept the tradeoffs but it really rubs me the wrong way when people say we need nigher minimum wages and then turn around and complain that their landscaper is forced to go all in on mechanized efficiency.

The reason for a slow migration is because the vast majority of gardeners and gardening companies only have gas powered leaf blowers, electric still don’t have the ability to run all day without at least 10-20 batteries, and electric doesn’t move as much air. As time goes on the tech will get better, the richer areas banning gasoline will encourage gardening companies to move to electric (and at a pace that won’t bankrupt them), and gas ones will die out.

Not everything is a class struggle.

Yeah, for a lot of consumers battery-powered lawn tools like weed whackers have gotten pretty good. I know for me the reduced maintenance and fiddling is a overall win for something I don't use all that often even if it's not quite as powerful and I can't always run it for as long as I would without recharging. (Though I could get another battery if I really cared.) But for a yard crew that's on the clock and may be working most of the day, the tradeoffs are a lot different.

You only need X batteries where X = charge time/discharge time.

But it’s more the capital investment, why bother replacing what is working?

It doesn't have to take off everywhere to solve the problem. When enough wealthy people don't want ICE leaf blowers, the market will change and they'll become more scarce.

They are banned in LA but you can’t tell because cops don’t bother with these laws

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