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Comment by baremetal | Hacker News Reader

Converting single family lawns into small gardens would do more to help with climate change than these ideas.

So much pollution is generated by industrial farming and transportation of the food to city folk.

Everyone who is _serious_ about helping with climate change should be willing to put in a little sweat equity.

Sadly I do not see that as the case. Much easier to talk about it, and insist other people make changes or sacrifices than to make them oneself.

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Replacing lawns with almost anything would help. Less water usage and less fertilizer runnoff would be great. But transporting food to "city folk" is way, way more efficient than transporting food to suburban or rural folk. And a small garden isn't going to move the needle much there. Densification is necessary to reduce per-capita carbon emissions.

Most people don’t have very much of a yard, and even a relatively large garden, say a fifth of an acre is not going to replace much industrial farming. I’m not saying it’s valueless (I think many home grown veggies are more delicious than anything available at a store. tomatoes of course, but also consider celery, so strong in flavor from the home garden) but I think it’s a relatively small part of the climate change equation.

As a side note, contractors for my neighbor just dumped a shitload of old asphalt and cement shingles on my 80 sqft garden, thick black dust over every plant. So idk, I’m just talking from the sidelines here, fucking demoralized.

>Most people don’t have very much of a yard, and even a relatively large garden, say a fifth of an acre is not going to replace much industrial farming.

Even 1/5 of an acre or less will yield more produce than your family and several neighbors families can eat.

I speak from experience. Till composted steer manure into the soil. Lots and lots. Every year.

> contractors for my neighbor just dumped a shitload of old asphalt and cement shingles on my 80 sqft garden

You should go talk to the contractor. He needs to clean that up.

>but I think it’s a relatively small part of the climate change equation.

No one wants to discuss Chinese and Indian emissions. Instead we are resigned to demonizing cow farts.

I’ve talked to plenty of people, they did actually clean up the pieces mostly (after a different neighbor called the state) but the heavy asphalt dust is just oh well, too bad, deal with it. That we are not aware of an effective method of removing the material, and I should get a soil test. I think probably removing the top 3 inches of soil and trashing all the plants would be pretty effective, but who knows.

I should have taken action faster, but was busy. My buddy’s perspective (who is also a contractor) was I should have called the cops immediately, told them to get the fuck off my property, and caused a huge scene, so that once it was all sorted out and they were back on my property, as they are allowed to be since the neighbors garage is directly on the property line, they would have tread carefully. Only way to get some guys to respect your stuff is to cause trouble, he says anyway.

Per capita emmisions from India is 10x lower than Usa

The earth does not concern itself with per capita.

Work from home would make that more plausible. It would also cut down emissions from pointless commuting.

But I doubt it would make as much of a contribution as a mass shift to vegetarianism.

Then again - why not all of the above?

Here in Vancouver there's a program called City Beet Farm (https://www.citybeetfarm.com/) where lawn-owners allow professional farmers to farm produce on their yard, in exchange for a fraction of the resulting vegetables. The homeowner doesn't have to do any of the work themselves, and it's actually quite impressive how much food experienced farmers can grow on a front yard.

First you have to unteach the public that all problems can be solved with another toxic petrochemical, otherwise you’re just rearranging the broccoli on our proverbial plate.

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