Just Say No To Gasoline-Powered Leaf Blowers
If I were king of the world, I would a) ban these things, and b) do what I could to convince my subjects that lawns, sidewalks and gutters need not be completely free of grass clippings and fallen leaves.
Tagged with: Gasoline-Powered Leaf Blowers
Craig,
Even when you finally advocate a good idea, you must sabotage any support it may attract by sermonizing !
Imposing an ideological solution such as banning leaf blowers, only alienates those who want the benefits these machines bring to their owners.
That’s why the environmental movement has been failing in recent years. Everything has become a divisive, hostile battleground between those who want to control people and lifestyles, and those who simply wish to mitigate the effects of environmentally harmful technologies by introducing more environmentally beneficial technologies.
Why not just replace dirty, noisy, smelly dangerous gas powered leaf blowers, and other garden-horticultural tools with, more convenient, safer, quieter, non-pollutant electric units?
Municipal authorities can encourage the use of such technology on health and safety grounds or even to reduce noise pollution. (Battery Electric units are less likely to start forest fires).
Such reforms don’t need to get bogged down in “moral” issues about climate change. The introduction of environmental reform can gain overwhelming support by just highlighting the advantages of better technology.
As an advocate, you must start asking yourself the all important question;
Do I want to win a ‘moral’ victory and crush any dissidents,who don’t agree with my ideological agenda, or do I want to people voluntarily adopt environmentally beneficial reform because the technology is better and more convenient?
I do think that we are at a point where we can ban all two-cycle engine powered anything.
For virtually all regular yardwork equipment, battery-operated electric equipment will do the job equally well, without the plumes of VOC’s. For those small engines, the efficiency is beyond terrible. Asking people to replace these smoke-belching nightmares with a quality piece of battery-operated electric yard tool should be met with little resistance if it is accompanied by a modest subsidy to help offset the additional cost.
But I don’t think we’re ever going to reach a point where we get rid of HOA’s and the desire to have a nice clean looking street edge. (We will sooner get rid of monoculture lawns – which are far worse than the belching smoke from leaf-blowers).
But it’s long past time that the 2-cycle engines went the way of the dinosaur.