Editorial: California should say goodbye to grass that’s only there for looks
latimes.com
latimes.com
Fun fact: before the Spanish conquest and aggressive grazing agriculture, the native grasses in California were perennials, greatly reducing the severity of fires.
This won't fix the aggressive consumption of water by agriculture. I'm not sure what to do about that, except allocates strict water allotments and encourage more drought resistant crops with government programs.
Having said that, people in the cities should plant natives and consider replacing lawns with native wildflower mix and paths. They attract beneficial insects, and those attract and support native birds. It’s also much lower maintenance.
Native insects and birds typically cannot survive on non-native plants. From animals’ perspective, your lush non-native garden may as well be asphalt.
You can find local natives for your neighborhood’s microclimate here:
(The other arguments against ornamental lawns are valid. As someone allergic to many grasses, I have no love lost for lawns.)
Decades ago, I saw an article about making little basins to capture rain water in the right amount to sustain a tree in the desert to grow fruiting trees in places like the Middle East using natural rainfall in order to increase productivity of arid lands without stressing the environment. I don't believe this is standard practice anywhere in the world, much less a "developed" country like the US, but there's no reason it couldn't be a common practice someplace like California.
And those basins and other flow control techniques should be embraced ubiquitously in the west; we could green a lot up if we collaborated properly.
Politically, "they" could not and that is the problem. Think about this. Who is "they?" Who could have the political power and will to do something like that without the support of the agriculture industry?
If you're talking about actual laborers, most of them aren't even citizens and this is not a priority for them.
If you're talking about the corporate boards who run the agriculture industry, this increases cost without increasing profit so this is not a priority for them.
I just can't think of how the agriculture industry could possibly get behind this.
Something being a problem for someone doesn't mean it's a priority.
Poor people will never prioritize global warming. They will always have more urgent priorities. This is one reason why environmentalism under capitalism is absolutely doomed.
That's extremely funny. I'm dirt poor and gave up my car well over a decade ago, in part because I couldn't afford it anymore and in part because I'm an environmental studies major who takes environmental issues seriously.
I'm not rich enough to afford to smoke cocaine to fuel my delusions and then buy a compound in New Zealand and a personal jet for getting there if my greed helps rapidly burn the world down while I imagine there's someplace safe to go after all the billionaires have destroyed the world in search of their own selfish gratification.
So I make a LOT of pro environmental choices. I got no place to go and no money with which to go there.
It's also funny because it assumes the global poor are too stupid to realize that global warming means they'll become victims of war, refugees, or starve (choose one or more).
So that's one reason they can't do that.
The water "shortage" in California is an "agribusiness water shortage". Shut down a bunch of farms and California has plenty of water.
We also need more water storage because we just had a ton of rainfall and let it run out to the ocean this summer.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-09/steve-lo...
I have mixed feelings about golf courses, but there is a thimbleful of actual data for you.
> Kessler said the valley has less than 1% of Southern California’s population, but 28.6% of its golf courses.
The entire article actually made me feel better about golf courses existing than before I read it, and I think golf is stupid.
Do you know what the golfers would say? "How about you tech people stop playing games, so there would be less energy consumption and less manufacturing, obesity would be less of an issue; you stop traveling so there would be less CO2 emission. Golf is the only pastime hobby for me now and you want to get rid of it?"
How would you respond to that?
https://www.meed.com/desalination-tariffs-and-the-race-to-th...
We must stop overuse of water especially alfalfa. This mean stopping/reducing our food habits i.e meat which might be unacceptable to many people.
It lowers temperature compared to pavement.
It's quite useful.
Literally the whole point of "we should use less water on lawns" is so we'll have more water for food, for humans. Because lawns contribute nothing that humans want or need.
"Use less water on lawns so we have more water for food, for humans".
That is a very one dimensional take. California's non-residential water usage doesn't just get used for human food, nor human food for Californians. Famously it gets bottled by Nestle, it gets used by Saudi Arabia to grow alfalfa for their cows, and it's used to grow almonds and other products that are exported outside of California.
So we have all these organizations using water in California, making a profit, exporting water from the state. (It's something like an 80/20 split for agriculture vs residential/urban water usage by the way).
So no, I don't agree that individual Californians should need to justify a patch of grass so that corporations and foreign nationals can continue exploiting our water resources. Sacramento should go fix literally all of that first.
If your mental health depends on specifically grass and will not accept any substitute, then I'm just sad for you. Grass is the most boring plant to look at.