Americans often pride themselves on their lawns. Maintaining our green grassy landscapes and colorful gardens is a $36 billion a year industry. Three-fourths of us have told pollsters that “my lawn and garden (are) a reflection of my personality.”

But the eco-lobby doesn’t want us to have nice things.

“On balance, lawns are awful for the planet,” Eric Holthaus wrote last week in Grist, an environmentalist online magazine.

“Our addiction to lawns means that grass is the single largest irrigated agricultural ‘crop’ in America, more than corn, wheat, and fruit orchards combined,” he adds. “A NASA-led study in 2005 found that there were 63,000 square miles of turf grass in the United States, covering an area larger than Georgia.”

Is there no end to the left’s screeching sermons, its demands we “do better,” the arrogance driven by a sense of moral superiority that believes it can make decisions for others?

While Holthaus admits lawns can be “pleasing,” “help reduce the urban heat island effect,” “help restore groundwater and reduce urban flooding,” and draw carbon dioxide from the air, Grist is much more interested in dispatching a tirade. We have to “culturally stigmatize” lawns because they are of no “net benefit” and simply “need to die.”

Grist openly brags about its “irreverent” approach to reporting the news. So there’s a slight temptation to think Holthaus is having a laugh at others’ expense. After all, who could actually oppose green lawns?

It’s no parody, though. It’s a scolding.

Naturally, there isn’t a single reference to freedom, liberty, or our right to live as we see fit without interfering busybodies in the Grist screed. But then its purpose is to browbeat, command, and eventually control.

The urge to force conformity to the environmentalists’ agenda won’t end with lawns. Nor did it start there. The long list of things we’re not supposed to have or do was begun some time ago, and now includes:

SUVs and pickup trucks

Luxury cars

Large homes

Travel by jetliner

Air conditioning

Set our thermostats at 72 at all times

Daily showers

Beef

Single-use plastic bags

Nuclear power

Next month it will be something else. And then there’ll be another target the month after. The eco-lobby will never grow weary in its wrongdoing.

Issues & Insights is a new site formed by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page. We’re just getting started, and we’ll be adding new features as time permits. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we believe the nation needs the kind of cogent, rational, data-driven, fact-based commentary that we can provide.

Be sure to tell all your friends! And if you’d like to make a contribution to support our effort, feel free to click the Tip Jar over on the right.

We Could Use Your Help Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists from the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to use our decades of experience to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we think our approach to commentary is sorely lacking both in today’s mainstream media and on the internet. You can help us keep our mission going. If you like what you see, feel free to visit our Donations Page by clicking here. And be sure to tell your friends! You can also subscribe to I&I: It's free!

Share this...





Reddit

Linkedin

email