901: Lawns | Skeptical Sunday

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1:38Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. And today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host Michael Regilio. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. And during the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, we do Skeptical Sunday where a rotating guest co-host and I break down a topic that you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions.

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2:46Today, a beautiful green lawn is a symbol of American wholesomeness. put a white picket fence around it, and you're living the proverbial American dream. But inside the fence, we waste water, we spread dangerous pesticides, we pollute ecosystems. Is maintaining a lush green lawn worth the environmental harm? At what cost do we pride these landscaped areas around our homes? Comedian Michael Regilio joins me to discuss why it isn't easy being green. Jordan, you're a homeowner. Do you have a lawn? Yeah. Where else am I supposed to put all my political signs. Oh, yeah, of course. I forgot your coveted go with Perot sign.

3:23What would you say if I told you your lawn was doing far more harm than voting for a third party ever could? I'd say my lawn is an investment in not just my home, but my community at large. Plus, it's a tradition in my family. My dad cared for the family lawn and got sunburned every weekend, just like his dad did. That may be true if you're referring to the micro community in your hometown. But if one sees society as their community, a well-maintained lawn sends a very different message. Maintaining grass lawns increases greenhouse gases, pollutes ecosystem, wastes water, and diminishes biodiversity.

3:59In addition, the tradition of lawns doesn't trace its roots back to our dads and grandfathers, but to the British aristocracy and elitism. Ooh, that's a buzzword. I'm surprised you didn't even throw in lawns are racist for good measure. Ha, we're getting to that. But first we need to discuss the origins of the modern lawn. Are the origins not just the land where we build our houses? The American dream includes a house with a lawn, but the lawns we love actually come from Italian dreams. So lawns come from Italy? Are you saying grass is Italian? No. Lawns come from Italian landscape paintings. The paintings included vast fields of trimmed grasses and tight hedgerows.

4:42the British aristocracy adored these paintings, and they loved them so much, they used their riches to recreate them around their mansions and castles. But the locations in the beloved paintings were fictional, made up fantasies by Italian artists. These lawns didn't exist in Italy or anywhere. Italian artists just made them up. So the British aristocracy was trying to live inside Italian paintings that were just not even based on real Italian landscapes at all. Yeah, and they were trying to live inside of Italian paintings and not the ones full of naked people and food like I would have chosen.

5:19In Britain at the time, affluent estates used their land to grow food and raise animals, but the lawn was garish in a whole new way. Having giant tracts of land used simply for aesthetic purposes became a potent statement of wealth and power. It was a way of saying, look how rich I am. I don't need to use my land for anything other than to be looked at. And I'm guessing since these lawns now needed teams of peasants to maintain them, and I love saying that word, peasants, they were a good way of reinforcing the classist system of the time. Great point. You're cut above the rest, Harbinger. Can we go back and edit my opening to include lawns are classist?

5:57I think you made your point here. I'm still waiting for lawns are racist, by the way. Yeah, we're getting there. Okay, so across the pond, wealthy Americans saw their British counterparts and understood the point of lawns. and they sought to emulate them. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had lawns at their estates. Yeah, it wasn't exactly peasants tasked with maintaining those particular lawns, eh? No, sadly, that was the enslaved people that they thought they owned. Okay, so lawns don't exactly have the romantic roots that many of us would have imagined. At the time of Washington and Jefferson, lawns were still just for the very wealthy.

6:35The modern concept of the American lawn didn't really explode until after World War II with the passage of the GI Bill. American men returning from the war were given a house with a lawn in these newfangled planned communities. Communities like Levittown on Long Island. It was a sprawling suburban development built on what had been potato fields. These cookie cutter communities sprang up all over the country and the American suburbs and the popularity of lawns flourished. Yeah, I've seen photos from that era. Very sort of Truman show. thousands of identical homes, all in neat little rows, and everything looks the same.

7:11Yeah, identical indeed. And it wasn't just the houses and lawns that looked the same. The GI Bill excluded most Black soldiers returning from the war, and both the suburbs and lawns became a symbol of white America. The lawn stood in stark contrast to the homes in urban communities. Suburbs had lawns, cities didn't. Yeah, so it's really starting to sound like lawns might be racist, man. All right, it's a little depressing, Regilia. I'm getting ready to remove all of my pink flamingos from my racist lawn. Not a bad idea. Look, the fact of the matter is lawns weren't optional anymore. Take Levittown.

7:50They had laws about the upkeep of lawns. Towns everywhere passed laws that your grass had to be kept to a certain length and well-maintained, or you were subject to tickets and fines. So ticketed for not mowing, whatever, cutting your lawn? Yeah. These were called covenant laws. They state that weekly mowing is required or a community crew would mow your lawn for you and bill you for it. Or in extreme situations, you could go to jail. Jail? That seems a little ridiculous. I guess that's what they call lawn enforcement. Anyone? I'll see myself out. Exactly. And these laws still exist. A guy in Florida named Joe Perdente went to jail for lawn violations.

8:31That's so ridiculous. Imagine being, what are you in for? Ah, I forgot to mow my lawn last week. Yeah, and it's not just Florida. One guy took his unmowed lawn all the way to the Michigan State Supreme Court and lost. It's so embarrassing. It's crazy. Another case in 2018 involved a man who went out of town. His landscaper unexpectedly died and so did his lawn. That cost him foreclosure on his property. People actually lose their homes and are fine big bucks for unmowed lawns. I've heard of people going to jail for grass before, but this is ridiculous. That's so ridiculous. Imagine going to jail because of your lawn.

9:10That's so dumb. You could say that they fought the lawn and the lawn won. All right. We may have hit our pun limit, Regilio. I think so at this point. Never. And it's not just the lawn that compels people to mow their lawns. the neighborhood at large pressures homeowners to keep a well-trimmed lawn. I see the appeal, though. There is something innately American about the, sounds corny, but the individual expression of a homeowner through their lawns. People take great pride in this stuff. Yeah, as American as, oh, I don't know, say communism. What? How is that? How is it communism? Think about it.

9:47Okay, that's what these covenant laws are saying. It's not your lawn. It's the community's lawn. It's not an expression of your individuality. It's an expression of the collective, man. You may think your lawn is green, but if you live in a community with covenant laws, trust me, it's red. Calm down, man. The only thing red is your face. It's just lawns. Interestingly enough, we're at a crossroads in our love affair with lawns. So much so that there's a whole new kind of lawn enforcement officer. And these officers aren't there to make sure your lawns look nice, especially here in California. There are ordinances that say you can't water your lawn during droughts.

10:27We're waking up to all the bad stuff that comes with lawns. All right, so water wasting, but what other bad stuff exactly? Okay, let's just start with some stats. Lawns are the largest crop in America. Lawns occupy 40 million acres of land in the United States, which is roughly three times the area of America's second largest crop, corn. I never really thought of lawns as crops, but I guess it makes sense. We're deliberately growing it, right? So anyone who's driven through a corn belt knows we grow a lot of corn, like a crap ton lot of corn. But if you're driving across country, you're gonna pass a lot more lawns than you're gonna pass corn.

11:07Lawns in America equal an area roughly the size of Iowa. Speaking of corn, I have driven through Iowa and it is a huge state. That's just a ton of lawn. Yeah. And when there's that much crop, as there is with lawns, any issue becomes exponentially larger. And lawns have many issues. Let's start with what you already mentioned, water usage. According to the EPA, Americans use so much water on their lawns, they could fill five million Olympic swimming pools a year. That sounds like a lot, but I don't really do that when I'm trying to convert ounces to Olympic swimming pools. Can you clarify that a little bit?

11:44Okay, fine. For people that can't do a simple ounce of water to Olympic swimming pool conversion. Let me put it this way, okay? And this stat is so stunning. When I first came across the actual number of gallons Americans use on their lawns, I didn't believe it. I had to check and cross-check, but I found this statistic from NASA scientist Christina Malisi. Americans use a whopping 20 trillion gallons of water a year on our lawns. 20 trillion. For context, we use 30 trillion gallons of water on all other crops. I cannot wrap my head around that. That is insane. That is so ridiculous. Yeah, you can't wrap your head around it because no one can.

12:31Okay, here's a figure we can wrap our heads around. In coastal California, every single square foot of lawn requires 28 gallons of water a year. Further inland, where the climate is even more arid, that number goes up to 37 gallons a year. Look, listeners should go out to their yard and dump 37 gallons of water on one spot. Then imagine doing that for every square foot of their lawn every year. Yeah, please don't go outside and do that. I think we get the point. That is so crazy wasteful. I had no idea. Yeah, again, and this is for something that serves no real purpose other than to be pretty.

13:08Lawns are directly competing with our food for water. Lawns might feel nice between your toes, but I'm not sure this justifies using all that water. 20 trillion gallons is so much water. All that just for what essentially amounts to a visually pleasing neighborhood. Yeah, we are obsessed. And in the Southwest where I live, homeowners use more water on their lawns than all other water use combined. That's particularly baffling right now as the entire country has been subject to this massive heat wave of summer 2023. You can go outside in Arizona and take one of those meat thermometers and it'll say it's 115 degrees outside and you're out there watering this fricking tropical crap you planted in your front yard so that your lawn's green.

13:50It's so stupid. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. I heard a story that the air is 115 degrees, but like the sidewalk is like 165 degrees. People are going into the emergency rooms with burns, third degree burns from touching the sidewalk. Oh, God. So if your kids want to play outside, you have to water down the concrete at the front of your house so that they don't scald themselves on the ground. No, if your kids want to play outside, you can't let them. Anyone letting their kids play outside in Phoenix these days probably risks having their kids taken away. It's crazy out there, Matt. Okay, so in an effort to add some balance to this discussion, I looked up what arguments there are to support lawns, and I found the Lawn Institute.

14:31That is patently ridiculous. Of course that exists. Big lawn, y 'all. Okay, I like that. Yeah, the Lawn Institute argues that lawns reduce erosion by allowing rainwater to absorb back into the ground. Okay, I suppose that makes some sense. It does, but here's the thing. Any plants reduce erosion. You don't need these foreign, non-indigenous plants like the ones we call lawns. Ah, non-indigenous. So first you made over-the-top statements that lawns are communist or classist or whatever. Now they're illegal immigrants. I stand by my hyperbole. So you're saying grass isn't even American? That's right.

15:10The dirty little secret of the grass industry is that Kentucky bluegrass ain't from Kentucky. It's Northern European, where not surprisingly, it was much cooler and rainier than most of the Southwest. Almost all the grasses we use for lawns are not indigenous. Because of that, they require a lot of artificial care to emulate the environments they naturally thrive in. Plus, they destroy the natural habitat for native plants and push them out. Lawns are non-indigenous monocultures. So lawns are basically a bunch of European grasses taking over our country and pushing out the native plants. It's actually the most American thing I've heard about lawns to date here.

15:50That's a pretty American thing to do after all. Yeah, that's hilarious. Look, that gets to the next big negative. When I just mentioned it, the lack of biodiversity we get with monocultures like lawns and the harm they do to the natural world. I did learn from a Bud Light commercial that diversity makes for a healthy society and whatnot. But what is biodiversity? Oh, I can't help myself. I have to say this, that I found that whole Bud Light controversy to be absolutely hilarious. So you could say that it was a real brouhaha. Oh, man. You're fired. Look, what is biodiversity? Biodiversity simply refers to the variety of native plants that make up the ecology of any given area.

16:31Biodiversity gives Mother Nature important biological controls. Without biodiversity, ecosystems fall apart. Think of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. That was an ecological disaster caused by the monoculture of farming that helped contribute to the full collapse of the ecosystem. The blame is partly due to the farming industry. If you're going to do stupid puns, I'm going to do stupid puns. They really put the dust in industry. Am I right? Okay, now I agree. We do need a moratorium on puns. It's only fine when you do it. Got it. Okay. Look, it's super necessary to landscape with native plants, period.

17:06Without a rich panoply of native plants, the all-important pollinators like bees die off. And when the pollinators die off, lots of stuff dies off. Yeah, that sounds apocalyptic. The whole all the bees are dead thing is kind of terrifying. Yeah, look, we've all heard about the problems farmers are having because of the lack of bees and other pollinators. This is because we have replaced so much of their diverse native habitats with monocultures. Monocultures are very un-environmental. Ironically, what we call weeds are far better for the environment than grass. And yet there's an entire aisle in Home Depot dedicated to weed killers?

17:43And the toxins in those weed killers are problematic in ways we could do an entire episode on. I've heard a lot about the problems with bees dying off, and are lawns actually to blame for this? Yes, and no, and yes again. Monocultures are to blame, and lawns are the biggest monoculture on the block. Climate change is also a big contributor to the problem with bees, and lawns are a big part of the problem with climate change. You know what's not racist? Probably. Maybe. The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

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19:47Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. So hold on. Don't lawns, like every other plant that exists, trap CO2 to offset carbon footprints companies plant trees? Lawns got to do some good in that respect as well, right? True. They do. They do capture CO2. But when compared to the CO2 the lawn industry puts out, it's a big net negative. Let's start with simple lawnmowers, which are mostly gas-powered. Unlike cars whose emissions are regulated, few regulations exist for lawnmowers. According to the EPA, running a new gas lawnmower for one hour produces 11 times more emissions than driving the average new car for an hour.

20:29That's disgusting, actually. Yeah, guess what? That's actually an improvement. The New York Times reported that a 2006 lawnmower engine contributed 93 times more smog-forming emissions than cars from the same year. That was only 17 years ago. So we have cut lawnmower emissions down. I wonder what a 1992 lawnmower did because I inhaled a ton of that stuff, man. Every weekend I was inhaling three hours worth of that disgusting fumes. Yikes. Whenever someone is mowing their lawn now, there's always that strong smell of gasoline in the air. For me, it's always been a little bit gross nostalgia. It definitely seems unhealthy, but I never really connected the dots to the environmental impact because I thought it's a leaf blower.

21:10it's a small engine. There's no way, even though it smells stronger, there's no way it's the same as my neighbor's Ford F-150 or whatever. Yeah. And you just actually just hit the next point, which is it's not just lawnmowers. The other big menace of the lawn industry is leaf blowers. Running a leaf blower for 10 minutes produces as much exhaust as driving a large pickup truck for 235 miles. So that's astonishing and really disgusting, but also not terribly surprising. There's no way they put a catalytic converter on the back of that tiny little backpack that the guy has. Yeah. And look, as long as we're on leaf blower, they create a very different but also harmful kind of pollution.

21:50They blow all kinds of dirt that was frankly just fine laying on the ground all up into the air for anybody walking outside to breathe. But I'm also guessing you're going to say noise pollution. Damn straight I am. I hate leaf blowers. Yeah, they are my nemesis. I'll get into that in a minute. The World Health Organization recommends people not expose themselves to noises above 70 decibels because over time, that level of prolonged noise can cause hearing loss, high blood pressure, and even cardiovascular disease. Erica Walker, a Harvard PhD, studies the effects of leaf blowers and found not only do they exceed safe decibel levels, they clock in between 80 and 90 decibels.

22:30That's as loud as a motorcycle and almost as loud as a rock concert. If you think that's bad, don't have kids because I've got that sound app on my Apple Watch and it routinely tells me when I'm playing with my kids that I'm in a loud environment and I need to use hearing protection because it clocks in at 80 or 90 decibels. And that's just one kid screaming in my lap. Try two or more for an hour. Obviously, Erica Walker, PhD, doesn't have any kids. She wouldn't be so worried about leaf blowers. But yeah, they are really loud, annoying. And as a podcaster, like I said, they are my nemesis. They are my enemy during the workday.

23:02I've actually on multiple occasions gone outside and told landscapers nearby to knock it off while I'm recording. Sometimes they're in my yard and other times they're in my neighbor's yard. And I'm like, don't do it. I don't care if they get mad at you. I'm trying to do something important. And you are literally blowing leaves from my neighbor's yard into my yard or my yard into my neighbor's yard. You're just making it someone else's problem. Yeah, I know. I feel bad for him. I do too. Nobody likes leaf blurs. It's like shooting the messenger. I know. So yeah, and they're not enjoying with that loud thing strapped to their back, but it is interesting that you should say that they're annoying because leaf blowers have another distinctive quality that goes hand in hand with their being loud.

23:38Walker shows in her research that the particular low frequencies produced by leaf blowers have negative effects on human health. The sound emitted by leaf blowers is particularly unsettling to humans. Who hasn't gotten irritable when the leaf blower guy just keeps blowing and blowing? But I thought it was just because I'm a cranky old fart in training. and not because of science. Yeah, without our pretty lawns, we'd actually be a lot calmer. And as long as I'm on the topic, psychologists have found that complex scenes of nature like meadows and forests have a calming effect on the human psyche as well.

24:12So you may think you like looking out at your nice lawn, but in reality, you'd be calmer looking out at a pleasant meadow like the one that you mowed down to build your house instead. Exactly. So look, noise and aesthetic issues aside, Let's get into the next issue. The fossil fuels being spent on lawn care doesn't end at lawnmowers and leaf blowers. In the U.S., it's estimated that we spill nearly 17 million gallons of gasoline while people are filling their lawn care equipment. For context, that's 50 percent more than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez. And the entire world freaked out over that spill.

24:49I never even heard of this statistic until I started researching this episode. That's hard to believe. 17 million gallons of gasoline spilled accidentally. It sounds impossible, but I guess filling lawnmowers is a spill-prone task. I do remember my dad filling the lawnmower using a funnel. It seems like that would do the trick. How is that not so commonplace? How are we still spilling 17 million gallons of fuel? That's hard to believe. Yeah, it's crazy, man. And look, that gas goes into the ground and then seeps into the groundwater and washes into waterways right along with all the other dangerous chemicals used to treat our lawns, like fertilizers and pesticides.

25:29Now, this is not surprising. Those fertilizers and pesticides have always creeped me out. Even when I was a kid, I didn't want to get near them. I don't go down that aisle in Home Depot. It smells weird. It smells unhealthy. It smells yellow. I associate it with just this really strong, I probably have synesthesia, but I walk in that aisle and I'm just like, this is not good for me. My throat is on fire. there's no chance that this is something that should be touching my skin or that I should be drinking. Yeah, it's one of those weird things where you get a taste in your mouth when you're around it.