MAY 2007
It is spring here in Missouri and that means only one thing. Every minute of
every day, somewhere close by, a lawn mover/trimmer/leaf blower will be
running. There will be no peace and quiet until late next fall. Along with the
heat, humidity, and bugs, mower noise will be omnipresent.
I don’t even hope any more that I will get a chance to listen to my system
on the weekends while the weather is warm. Despite the extensive
insulating that I have done to my room, I cannot keep out the piercing
drone of the internal combustion engine. I have to seize my opportunities
during the weekdays when they present themselves. When I notice that it
is quiet, I head for the listening room and just hope that it stays that way
for a few hours.
The (human) mowers that irritate me the most are the ones who don’t get
started until Sunday evening. This past Sunday, my wife and I took a walk
about five-thirty in the afternoon and, two houses away, the lawn was just
being cut. When we returned about forty-five minutes later, that mower
was finishing up but was then joined by his neighbor who was just getting
started. How is it possible that these people can’t find any other time
during the weekend to cut their grass than Sunday evening?
I had hoped to do some listening today but as I headed for the basement,
the mowers (human and mechanical) started in on the common ground
behind my house. They will be there running their polluting equipment for
the next several hours, at least.
The noise is irritating, to say the least, but my real problem with lawn
mowing is that every aspect of it harms the planet.
The (mechanical) lawnmower itself burns remarkably dirty, while consuming a
non-renewable resource. You can drive the average car for six hours at fifty-
five miles an hour and produce the same amount of pollution that your
mower produces in a single hour*. I can’t even imagine how dirty the two-
cycle-engined trimmers and blowers run. You can add to this pollution the
gasoline that gets spilled, the used oil and lawn chemicals that get poured
down the storm sewers polluting the fresh water supply, and the idling
diesel trucks of the chemical-lawn industry as they spray God-knows-what
on my neighbors’ yards.
Aggravating the problem is that virtually everyone cuts their grass too
short. The grass loses so much of its blade that it can’t manufacture its
own food any longer. Without petroleum based fertilizers and lots of water
the grass simply can’t grow. Sixty percent of home water use goes to
watering lawns. That is going to be a problem in the future as fresh water
supplies became more and more stressed.
And what about those weeds? Yet more petrochemicals get dumped on the
grass so that it looks, not like a lawn, but like the perfect carpet held out as
the suburban ideal by corporate advertising. Here is the interesting thing
about that, though. Eighty percent of all animals on the planet are
nematode worms that live in the soil. Eighty percent! No one knows for
sure what they do or how they affect the health of the planet, but we are
happy to douse them in Roundup because getting down on our hands and
knees and digging the weeds out is just too much work. And a weedy-
looking lawn just isn’t good enough.
After fertilizing, herbiciding, and cutting the grass, what do we do with the
lawn trimmings? We put them out for the trash truck to pick up, flooding
our air with more carcinogenic diesel exhaust as, in many places, it hauls the
clippings to the dump. We spend money to grow a crop that we simply
throw away. Is this a great country or what?
Thankfully, where I live the collected lawn debris is eventually composted so
it is not a total loss.
The whole system is a mess that wastes resources, pollutes, and makes way
too much noise**. And it has to change soon.
What needs to be done to convert this system from waste and pollution to
something that actually helps the planet and reduces global warming is really
simple and has nothing, to my mind, but economic and environmental
benefits. Instead of grass lawns with their high maintenance, we forego
them for ones using ground covers, native grasses, shrubs, or other
materials that don’t need to be relentlessly cut, watered, and fertilized. It is
that simple and I have seen it done.
The people cutting yards will still have jobs installing and maintaining grass-
free yards. More hand work and less machinery will be needed. The gas-
engined lawn mower, trimmer, blower people can just go out of business.
They are already making all of their products in China; there are no American
jobs to lose.
Personally, I want a yard that I can spruce up in ten minutes using only my
electric string trimmer. I want my yard to be using up carbon dioxide, not
creating it. I don’t want to own another lawnmower.
Will cutting back on the pollution from lawns really make a difference when
compared to the global warming caused by automobiles, airplanes, and
power plants? It is clearly a lot less significant in total terms but my feeling
is that, if we are to have any hope of rescuing this planet, we have to do
anything and everything we can. Maybe lawns are only X% of the problem
but that is X% we can work on right now, with little economic disruption,
and without needing the cooperation of the government to do it.
Moving on…
THE KILL A WATT
I recently purchased one of these little devices on eBay and I think it should
be considered a necessity by everyone. It is inexpensive, about $25
depending on who you buy it from, and simple to use. Click here for a
photo.
It does not use any batteries. Once plugged into a wall socket, you can
immediately determine your line voltage and frequency. Plug any electrical
device into it, up to its 15 amp limit, and you get a readout of Watts, Amps,
VA, Power Factor, or Kilowatt hours as well. You can actually see how much
electricity a device is using and determine its cost. Potentially, it can be used
to find ways to cut back on electrical usage.
I bought it because I wanted to see how much current my amplifiers and
other components are actually drawing while they run. I am still playing with
it, but I think it is worth the money just as a monitor for the line voltage.
www.p3international.com
As I continue to use it, I will follow up on what I learn.
MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH
Mstislav Rostropovich passed away on April 27, 2007 at the age of 80. He
was best known as a cellist but used his international prestige to press for
cultural freedom in the Soviet Union. He was eventually forced to move to
Paris in 1974 for his efforts on behalf of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. After the
fall of the Soviet Union, he made a triumphant return to Russia in 1996 with
the National Symphony Orchestra.
It is the artists, not the politicians, who are willing to stand up for the rest
of us.
I only have one CD by Rostropovich, Great Works for Cello and Orchestra,
Deutsche Gramophone, D 206418. I listened to it in his honor. I
particularly enjoyed the Shostakovich Concerto for Cello and Orchestra,
Number 2, opus 126, which was dedicated to Rostropovich. I can’t remotely
claim that I understand all that it is trying to say, but it is very interesting to
listen to and the sound is excellent. We are lucky to have his recorded
legacy and to have had him among us.
AHMET ERTEGUN
I watched, The House that Ahmet Built on PBS last night, the story of both
Ahmet Ertegun and Atlantic Records. It is really worth seeing if you missed
it. This presentation shows how important Atlantic Records has been to the
history of Rhythm and Blues, Jazz, and Rock music. While it skirts rather
quickly over some areas—failure to pay royalties to a lot of black artists and
questions of Ahmet’s infidelity and drug usage—it still provides a remarkable
picture of a fascinating life. Full of film clips and interviews, the nearly two
hours fly by. I was fascinated just by seeing so many artists in the blush of
their youth again. (Not everyone has aged well.) And I am certainly going
to buy Mick Jagger’s autobiography whenever he writes it. Very highly
recommended.
Kent Johnson
May 3, 2007
*The other statistic that I have commonly found is that one hour of lawn
mowing equals running 40 cars for an hour. Thank Missouri’s Senator
Christopher “Kit” Bond, Republican, for the dirty air coming from your
lawnmower. About four-five years ago, California introduced legislation to
limit lawn mower emissions. Senator Bond stepped in on behalf of his
buddies at Briggs & Stratton, who have a plant in Rolla, Missouri, and
stopped California from doing so with federal legislation. Bond claimed that
there was a danger of fires if the mowers had catalytic converters installed.
(How many fires have the 230 million cars on the road with converters
caused?) And Bond also had to “protect” the American workers in Missouri
because B&S, with their great American Can-Do attitude said that making
cleaner mowers would force them to manufacture them in China. So for
four years or so nothing has been done. Now a deal has been made that
will require cleaner mowers in 2012, I believe. A couple of days after this
deal was made, B&S announced that it was closing the Rolla plant anyway
and moving the jobs out of Missouri. Net result—dirtier air for everyone;
campaign contributions for Kit; more profit for B&S; more Americans out of
work.
**I can hear you saying, Kent, you anti-corporate, liberal, tree-hugging
communist, I use a push/electric mower, so there goes your whole
argument! Not exactly. Cutting the grass itself releases volatile organize
compounds that are eight times better at trapping greenhouse gases than
carbon dioxide. That nice cut grass smell—ethane and methane
compounds. A push mower is much, much better but a lawn that does not
need to be cut is better still.
While we are talking about methane compounds, here is the really terrifying
situation that we face: As Arctic ice melts it is going to release methane
hydrates trapped in the ice. As temperatures warm, methane hydrates
under the oceans may also be released. Due to the huge amounts of frozen
methane hydrates stored on this planet, it's game-over when it happens.
Nothing we do afterwards will have any effect. Global warming will accelerate
and be completely out of control. Talk of reducing global warming by 20% in
2050 as a goal is delusional. The reality is that we need to reduce carbon
dioxide releases by 75-80% and we needed to do it five years ago.
