"'That dust can contain pollen, mold, animal feces, heavy metals and chemicals from herbicides and pesticides'.... All this adds up to increased risk of lung cancer, asthma, cardiovascular disease, premature birth and other life-threatening conditions.... But the trouble with leaf blowers isn’t only their pollution-spewing health consequences. It’s also the damage they do to biodiversity. Fallen leaves provide protection for overwintering insects and the egg sacs of others. Leaf blowers, whether electric or gasoline-powered, dislodge the leaf litter that is so essential to insect life — the insect life that in turn is so essential to birds and other wildlife. The ideal fertilizer and mulch can’t be found in your local garden center. They are available at no cost in the form of a tree’s own leaves...."
From
"The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Leaf Blowers" (NYT).
And there's this: "hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor."
Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre.
Posts
171 comments:
"Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre.
Or driving an F-150.
What am I missing here? People don't blow leaves off their lawn for aesthetic reasons, they blow them off because if they stay they are a thick cover that blocks the sun from reaching the grass, which straight up kills the grass - which can cost thousands to reseed, and traps moisture that rots the grass and can turn the yard into a mud pit.
Yes it can help fertilize if you mulch it, but it can also be far to many leaves for mulching to help more than it hurts. When there are that many leaves, mulching just buries the yard in ground up leaves instead of whole leaves. Either way the yard is buried and hidden from the sun
Why aren't we ashamed? Because we don't give a s**t what the NYT and what that 'blah blah blah' girl from Scandinavia think.
I do note that what I can see of the article is full of buzzwords but no evidence. For example, there is no evidence that the dust kicked up causes cancer. Nor that using a leaf blower reduces biodiversity. The authors just throw those words out there to help scare their target audience and its inability to think critically.
"(I had to look up what a Raptor is — even though we are in the process of buying a Ford F-150."
Can't recommend a 4x4 enough, though likely that's what you're considering being in snow country and all. Bought mine in 1994 and it still runs great. Went with the XLT option. A bit extra, but it came with the cassette player.
Fallen leaves provide protection for overwintering insects and the egg sacs of others. Leaf blowers, whether electric or gasoline-powered, dislodge the leaf litter that is so essential to insect life — the insect life that in turn is so essential to birds and other wildlife. The ideal fertilizer and mulch can’t be found in your local garden center. They are available at no cost in the form of a tree’s own leaves....
Before there were leaf blowers there were rakes. They did the same thing. People don't want decomposing leaves all over their yards. I'm sure raw sewage is a good fertilizer too, but we choose to dispose of it rather than spread it over our lawns.
Leaf blowers are an abomination.
If you want a debris-free yard, rake it yourself or pay somebody else to do it.
They are worse than cars blaring out crappy music...at least those roll on by in a few seconds.
I'm not swayed by the arguments made here (even though they may be good ones). I am swayed by the fact that they are loud, obnoxious, and omnipresent...
Btw, good luck getting the truck...it is a nice product. Try not to pay too much...
I'm not going to bother looking this up so can someone explain to me how a half hour using 2-stroke leaf blower can release more harmful emissions than a giant truck travelling nearly 4000 miles. Is the leaf blower burning through hundreds of gallons of fuel in 30 minutes? It just doesn't seem possible that burning a half gallon or so of an oil/gasoline mixture has enough volume of harmful materials to do so. I'm no scientist though.
If you believe the UN has never solved ANY problem (the plight of stateless persons and refugees after WWII, democratic elections on the Korean penninsula, epidemics in Haiti...) you probably have no confidence in the UN-International Panel on Climate Change. And having skepticism about climate change, along with experience about how the US EPA has fouled up the simple plastic gas can spout, you probably doubt and resent hectoring about leaf blowers.
My leaf blowers are electric, by the way.
It's not just blowers. Chain saws. Tillers. Golf Carts.
GENERATORS. The UN-IPCC includes warnings, lately, about "global stilling", a manifestation of climate change that reportedly will result in fewer and weaker winds for our electrical windmill generators. So, what is the consumer to do about preparing backups? He can't even put up his own windmill -- not if "stilling" is truly "global". But having a small generator can be lifesaving. (Assuming the typical consumer can get gasoline out of a federally approved canister without setting the garage on fire...)
I doubt the comparison. The CO2 produced is triple the weight of the fuel in almost everything. Maybe they're talking about pollution kinds that autos produce roughly zero of.
There's a woman in my neighborhood that has been promoting NO-MORE-LEAF-BLOWERS.
When I hear the leaf blower, then I know it's time to pay the Mexican.
serious question, for those of you out there that Use leafblowers
WHY? What are you accomplishing? What do you Think you're accomplishing??
inquiring minds, want to know
Bonus Question
WHERE do you think, you're blowing them to?
Why aren't people ashamed to use Private planes and then turn around and lecture the rest of us how to live?? People will do what they want to do. This IS still America after all. For how long, we shall see.
Having spent a childhood endlessly raking leaves on a 1 acre lot, followed by teen years pushing a Sears leaf bagger (rotating brush pushed leaves into a hopper) over that same expanse, I avoided raking leaves for decades as an adult. Now in my 60s I have 7 oak trees of 30+ years maturity on a quarter acre of lawn, and sufficient leaves each fall to bury several adult moose should they so desire. I feel entitled to speak authoritatively when I say leaf blowers are life savers. Please add to the negative column of this supposedly Hobbesian utilitarian calculation that bans on blowers will incur all the injuries and deaths caused by manual removal of leaves from lawns by fat elderly folk like me.
Me, I like disrupting the microenvironments, not least because things that live under dead leaves need to stay the hell away from my house.
"Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower?"
I am. That's why I hire working-class guys to bear the shame and do the job.
"It's quite bizarre."
Tongue-in-cheek, no?
Anyway, how many leaf-blowers does it take to exceed the emissions of one Chinese coal-fired power plant?
But the trouble with leaf blowers isn’t only their pollution-spewing health consequences. It’s also the damage they do to biodiversity. Fallen leaves provide protection for overwintering insects and the egg sacs of others. Leaf blowers, whether electric or gasoline-powered, dislodge the leaf litter that is so essential to insect life — the insect life that in turn is so essential to birds and other wildlife. The ideal fertilizer and mulch can’t be found in your local garden center. They are available at no cost in the form of a tree’s own leaves...."
Not in my driveway, which is where I use the leaf blower
The technology to produce catalytic converters for small 2 stroke engines has existed for decades. Government hasn't mandated them and consumers haven't demanded them.
Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre.
Because it’s a useful tool for cleaning up?
Banning gas-powered blowers is imperialism against Mexican culture.
The cleanest air I ever experienced in NYC was during a taxi strike. New Yorkers should walk, not ride.
And besides, what are all of those newly minted Democrat voters crossing our southern border going to do with themselves if they are not blowing leaves?
I have a very hard time believing that 30 minutes of running a leaf blower produces more emissions than a five-day journey in a full-size pickup truck. The blower will burn about a pint of fuel - the truck will use over 200 gallons. Or is it an electric truck?
I use an eGo leaf blower, mower, and chainsaw. All battery powered.
Should I sip my coffee with a raised pinky since I'm obviously so much better than anyone else?
One note for me....I'm about to start maintaining a 2 acre lot, heavily wooded and wet with a gentle slope to a creek/stormwater run-off in the back. Allowing leaves to build-up on the ground traps enormous moisture (i.e. it becomes a swamp) and creates stormwater runoff issues because the ground is so saturated when a major storm comes the rain doesn't slowly move to the creek, it floods the creek - leading to downstream flooding and erosion. Bad for my neighbors downstream.
So what am I supposed to do about that? Ignore my leaf build-up?
I have a very hard time believing that 30 minutes of blower use (a cup of fuel, or maybe a pint) gives off more emissions than a five- or six-day journey in a full-size truck (over 200 gallons, by my calculation). Or is it an electric truck?
A Stirling engine is the way to go on leaf blowers. You can power it by burning leaves.
Most people I see using leaf blowers are professional gardeners who use them several times a day at their job. No shame in their game.
How soon until the wacko Left starts complaining that lawns are monocultures and must be torn up and replaced with more appropriate ecosystems?
Why do some people spend so much of their time trying to tell other people how to live?
I am definitely not buying the Raptor thing. Being generous and giving the Raptor 39 mpg, the truck burns 39 gallons of gas. And the claim is that two hours of a leaf blower creates equivalent emissions to that? No.
That said, I rake my leaves with a regular rake, and then only in December, once the nutrients have largely gone back into the soil.
Landscape crews love leaf blowers because they are major time savers. They work on a variety of surfaces for a variety of things that need cleaned up.
...but yes, they are crap...
They make electric ones. I have one and feel so...virtuous!!!
Here's the thing, I don't want insects in my lawn. In fact, I pay a guy to come by every quarter to spray some stuff so that bugs are kept off of my lawn and out of my house. Good thing too because insects were killing my two big maple trees.
Why can't these Eco-Communists just FOAD? Who needs a leaf blower? Someone with a suburban home or a country home. Those people, the icky people, not the urban people.
The yard crew at our country estate finds leaf blowers to be invaluable. Is there a more efficient way to collect leaf, seed, and grass waste for our compost pile? The blower makes the terrace, the lawns, and the rest of the grounds immaculate without the back-breaking effort of wielding rakes and brooms. Chapo and the rest of the lads have told us again and again how glad they are that we have provided blowers, and they have told us that we should keep those blowers going, if we know what is good for us (I think I got the translation right).
Case closed.
The first thing we do is kill of the NYT. FIFY.
The two-stroke engine is used not only in leaf blowers, but chain saws, string trimmers and brush cutters, to name just a few. Using a four-stroke engine is much more costly. I've used both types of engine for a brush cutter. The Ryobi brush cutter uses a two-stroke engine and is a light-duty tools that cost me only $139. It did a good job, but it was not designed for the use I put it through and it failed due to metal fatigue at the end of the power shaft. I replaced it with a heavy-duty Honda brush cutter that uses a four-stroke engine and cost $500.
The two-stroke engines mainly use 50:1 gasoline/oil fuel mix while the four-stroke use pure gasoline with a separate oil reservoir that must be changed at regular intervals.
The NYT's assertion that burning a quart of 50:1 fuel mix for a half-hour generates more hydrocarbon emissions than a 3,900-mile drive is laughable. That drive would require 195 gallons of gasoline for a 20 mpg car. Good one, NYT!
As for using a leaf blower vs. a rake, there's a reason gardeners use a leaf blower: it's easier! I've used both, and I'll take the leaf blower most of the time. There's no embarrassment. What is embarrassing is believing an article about gardening from the concrete-canyon based NYT.
2nd attempt to get blogger to work.
Let me get this straight. We're mad because blowing the leaves into the part of the property that we leave more natural "dislodges the leaf litter" thereby... what (they don't exactly say)? I guess we're destroying the insects' habitat in the part of the property we prefer to keep clean? But we're also mad because the leaf blower blows away the chemicals, which ... what (they don't exactly say)? Would leaving the chemicals in place make the insects' habitat better? Science is hard!
I don't like gas-powered leaf blowers when I'm trying to sleep in, but otherwise I won't be manipulated into getting worked up over a cherry picked list of microaggressions against gaia.
And what does the author have against all the insects that live in the part of the property we keep natural? I bet they would looove to have some more of that life-sustaining "leaf litter" blown over to them.
And stop complaining about mold, pollen, etc. Wear your fucking mask automaton.
Maybe you should be marveling that you can drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor and only emit the same hydrocarbon emissions as a small engine running for half and hour. Thank you civilization!
Also, acid rain, melting icecaps, and global warming. Those are valid, too!
Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre.
That may be a reason so many people hire lawn care companies. Paying others to burden their shame for them. I use a rake and broom myself.
Hydrocarbon emissions are basically just unburned gasoline in gaseous form. The only bad thing hydrocarbons do is make smog, which in 2021 isn't a problem for 99.9% of the country. The fact that cars don't produce smog anymore is a reason to keep using small engines, not a reason to get rid of them!
If someone wants to come and rake my leaves for free I’ll think about whether I or my yard service should worry about this. And since I’m an old geezer I do use a yard service (my wife eventually insisted), but I do sometimes deal with my own damn leaves too
And I use an electric leaf blower myself, so I must be good. All electric gets dispensation, right? The modern indulgence!
A Raptor gets around 20 mph on the highway, depending on the engine type, so a 3,900 mile trip might use a little less than two hundred gallons of gas. It’s hard for me to believe a half hour of running a leaf blower emits as much hydrocarbon as burning that much gas in a truck. If true, my main reaction is to be impressed by how clean conventional car and truck engines have become.
I’ve never understood why some people spend money to go to a gym, and also spend money on a noisy, vile smelling thing like a leaf blower. Why not save the leaf blower money, and instead get some or your exercise in peace the old fashioned way with a rake?
Why aren’t people ashamed to use leaf-blowers? Because you’d have to hire four underpaid illegal immigrants to rake leaves for each one blowing them, and there are some jobs even illegal immigrants won’t do.
I hate them but have a small electric one for getting leaves off my relatively flat roof. Definitely wearing a can mask because I don’t want to inhale bug larvae. Or anything else. Allergies are an extreme sport here. In the city nearby, which is famous for its trees-n-pollen, you create a safety hazard if you don’t get the leaves off the roads and sidewalks. But no self-respecting illegal immigrant would do that with a rake.
I don’t mean to mock these hard workers, just the people and industries and neighborhood associations and governments who exploit them.
And there's this: "hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor."
Interesting. Can we agree that for the purposes of evaluating this statement that the total volume of gasoline used by a leaf blower vs a Ford Raptor is a good proxie for the amount of hydrocarbons they produce for a give level of effort? It's a little off if you consider that the leaf blower uses a mixture of gasoline and oil, but bear with me.
Some math. The official highway MPG rating for a Ford Raptor is 18 MPG. Real world it would get less, but let's use that. A 3,900 mile trip would burn 216.67 (3,900/18) gallons of gasoline.
The first leaf blower that came up at Home Depot has a fuel capacity of 18.6 ounces (of which 2 ounces is oil). Assuming you have to refuel the leaf blower once during 30 minutes of use, that's a total of 39.2 ounces, or .3 gallons.
So barring a math error, that's 216.67 gallons vs .3 gallons. How on earth can the above statement be true no matter what differences you have in how cleanly the fuel is burned in one versus the other? My bullshit detector is tingling.
A rake
Do these problems magically disappear 8f you use a battery powered, or a plug in leaf blower?
Ann,
Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre.
Um, likely because most of the people using gas-powered leaf-blowers are the employees of landscaping companies?
My husband has an electric leaf-blower, which we use to get the leaves off our decks and for no other purpose. I don't know whether you think he should be "ashamed." Is it the leaf-blowing that irks you, or the gas-powered-ness?
The real weirdness in Renkl's article wasn't even about leaf-blowers; it was about Newsom's concomitant proposals to ban power washers (huh?) and generators (double huh?) Apparently CA wants to put everything whatsoever onto a legendarily rickety electrical grid -- including all vehicular traffic within a decade (OK, your private jets are all right, but everything else) -- and then make it impossible to do, or heat, anything when the power goes out, as of course it will. This is so insane I don't know where to start.
We've been in OR for a decade now, so are safe (for the moment) from this asininity, but I have to think it's only a matter of time. Just today our own power was out for a couple of hours, and I turned on our gas-powered faux fireplace for heat. Newsom probably wants to ban those, too. Certainly he's in favor of not having new homes hooked up to gas at all.
Don't electric lawnmowers and leaf blowers have the same problems with kicking up dust?
In 1998, Los Angeles County banned the use of leaf blowers within 500 feet of a residence. But the law wasn't enforced (how could it be?). All of my neighbors' gardeners continued to use leaf blowers for their weekly cut-and-blows. Now California is on the verge of banning leaf blowers throughout the state. In Governor Newsome's mind, perhaps every one of California's 37 million citizens will become state employees, with the sole function of stopping untold millions of "undocumented immigrants" from using these ubiquitous tools.
ashamed? you mean like, the lawn guy?
Can I keep using my battery powered blower? I only use it on the driveway blowing the leaves onto the lawn.
What is the likelihood that all Management people of the NYTimes who own homes use, or hire landscapers who use, leafblowers? I'd say close to 100%
I myself prefer raking. Some of my older neighbors use leaf blowers. There is room in this world for both leaf-collection strategies.
... hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor.
I'd like to see the source for that statement. Hydrocarbon emissions are roughly related to the amount of gasoline burned in the engine. A half hour of leaf blowing will burn, in my limited experience, less (much less) than a quart of gasoline. A 2.7L Ford Raptor, at the rated 22 mpg (combined) would burn over 177 gallons of gasoline in a 3900 mile trip.
Hyperbole run wild. I think I'll go rake some leaves. I love the smell of burning leaves in the morning.
I have 5000 sq ft of pavers. My neighbors trees shed their leaves and they blow into my back yard. You want me to sit out there with a broom sweeping them up all up?
One should not assume every situation is the same as another. Nothing wrong with a leaf blower when placed in the broader context of all of life's choices. I DO NOT wish to live in a society where every choice we each make is judged by our neighbors and determined to be detrimental.
News flash, that alcohol you sip is detrimental -- WHO says there is NO safe amount of alcohol that can be consumed. Any amount damages your immune system.
Multiple sex partners? Massive risk for disease and emotional health problems, plus damaged families.
Drinking sugary drinks? More risk for chronic diseases.
The list can go on and on. Make like a leaf blower and leave.
typingtalker said: "Hyperbole run wild. I think I'll go rake some leaves. I love the smell of burning leaves in the morning."
I used to love that smell. Unfortunately, progressives banned that too.
I'd like to see the source for that statement.
Like all NYT sources, this one remains anonymous for fear of mean remarks from Donald Trump.
Strick @1437:
Some math. The official highway MPG rating for a Ford Raptor is 18 MPG. Real world it would get less, but let's use that. A 3,900 mile trip would burn 216.67 (3,900/18) gallons of gasoline.
The first leaf blower that came up at Home Depot has a fuel capacity of 18.6 ounces (of which 2 ounces is oil). Assuming you have to refuel the leaf blower once during 30 minutes of use, that's a total of 39.2 ounces, or .3 gallons.
So barring a math error, that's 216.67 gallons vs .3 gallons. How on earth can the above statement be true no matter what differences you have in how cleanly the fuel is burned in one versus the other? My bullshit detector is tingling.
You are right, it should be. Just not for the reason that occurred to you.
The leaf blower is a two cycle engine, which mixes fuel and air in the crankcase, has no feedback loops, and a simple exhaust.
In contrast, the Raptor is a four cycle engine with closed loop full-authority digital engine control, fuel injection, and catalytic converters.
Consequently, its hydrocarbon emissions are practically zero. In fact, on a smoggy day in LA (which are far less common than they used to be), the exhaust coming out the tail pipe of a Raptor is cleaner than what went into the engine.
Other than converting reciprocal motion into rotary motion, the two are almost completely unalike. I think the technical term is "invidious comparison." No surprise to find such ignorance/dishonesty in the NYT.
In San Diego we are supposed to conserve energy and have times of rolling blackouts due to high energy demands. But I guess we can start using electric blowers.
Blower driven dust and pollen is bad…is wind driven dust and pollen different?
Blowers are bad because they destroy leaf litter? According to http://firesafesdcounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/rsgsandiego.pdf leaf litter is bad.
Zone One extends 35 feet from your home.
• Must be permanently irrigated to maintain succulent growth.
• Is primarily low-growing plant material, with the exception of trees. Plants shall be low-fuel and fire-resistive.
• Trim tree canopies regularly to remove dead wood and keep branches a minimum of 10 feet from structures, chimney outlets and other trees.
• Remove leaf litter (dry leaves/pine needles) from yard, roof and rain gutters.
• Relocate woodpiles and other combustible materials into Zone Two.
• Remove combustible material and vegetation from around and under decks.
• Remove or prune vegetation near windows.
• Remove “ladder fuels” (low-level vegetation that would allow the fire to spread from the ground to the tree canopy). Create a separation between low-level vegetation and tree branches by reducing the height of the vegetation and/or trimming low branches.
35’ 65’
Defensible space is the required space between a structure and the wildland area that, under normal conditions, creates a sufficient buffer to slow or halt the spread of wildland fire to a structure. It protects the home from igniting due to direct flame or radiant heat. Defensible space is essential for structure survivability during wildland fire conditions. For more in- formation about defensible space zones and preparedness techniques within each, visit the San Diego Fire-Rescue website at http://www. sandiego.gov/fire/services/brush
So rakes for everyone. It’s going to take gardeners longer and they’ll have to choose between raising prices or a essentially taking a cut in hourly rate. People who do their own gardening can just take longer to get the same job done.
Althouse writes, ...we are in the process of buying a Ford F-150.
Why would the suave and urbane Althouse need a full-size pickup? Why not a Ranger? She ought to ashamed.
Another NYT concrete canyon story. Having lived in NYC and then outside of it (and now in SC) leaf blowers save massive amounts of time and time is the one thing we can't make more of. I've used both gas and electric blowers and if I had to rake the same area [not to mention that leaf blowers are quick and easy for cleaning off dusty decks, dirty driveways, etc....] it'd easily take me 5-10 times the time using a leaf blower does. Add in the "tennis elbow" I'd likely get from raking the area repeatedly in the fall ... then the doctor bill, driving to the dr's office... . Leaf blowers work. They work well. And no one is forcing anyone to use one. Use a rake if you want.
Show me the numbers NYT. Meanwhile,
Get off my lawn.
Althouse writes, ...we are in the process of buying a Ford F-150.
Why would the suave and urbane Althouse need a full-size pickup? Why not a Ranger? She ought to be ashamed.
https://egopowerplus.com/power-blowers/
I got a small enough yard to use their snow blower and weed trimmer as well. I never get tired on NOT using gasoline.
It's only non-raking people whom want to ban leaf blowers.
"Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre."
That has to be snark. Otherwise our lovely host has never done any leaf raking.
"we are in the process of buying a Ford F-150."
Where are you going to park it?
I would love a small camper and a trailer for a telescope, but I have no place to park them.
(BTW, +1 for "Blogger Joe Smith said...Leaf blowers are an abomination.")
I use a 20V leaf blower in my back patio here in New Mexico. Sometimes I sweep, but I can't sweep the leaves and blown sand that is in the rocks around the wall. I blow all that stuff out the gate on to my gravel drive and let nature take care of it from there. Right now we are getting gusts of wind up to 45 MPH. The desert willow and NM olive trees in the patio will send leaves flying. Tomorrow morning, before the wind returns, I'll sweep the deposited piles and put them in the compost, and blow the thousands of stray leaves out the gate. It will be a rinse and report sort of week. And, I'll use the net to clean the water feature. It is a good time of year to be retired.
We have a bagger on the ride on mower. I still use the leaf blower to blow the leaves where I can collect them with the mower. Chops up the leaves nicely so they decompose faster in the mulch pile. The bugs and other critters like that for a habitat just fine.
Should I be ashamed that I use a big ride on mower to cut our three acre lot? I'm not and neither are any of our neighbors when they or their landscapers do their lawn maintenance. So buzz off with your stupid rules and just leaf us alone!!
Let's go Branden!
I have an electric blower. The carbon credit goes to my F-150. Re the blower: I've gotten adept at taking advantage of the lower power of a draining battery to pile the leaves into one spot to be easily raked or swept up to put in the bin.
They are outlawed here and there in California. But they are replaced by LI-battery powered versions that are quieter, yet stir up the same dust and pollen etc.
Dumbest anti-anything article that I have ever read. Lets start with abandoning power-assisted tools and return to manual leaf raking which finds all the muscles that you never use and results in loss of sleep and back pain. Excess effort along these lines puts 75-100 thousand people into the hospital every year from accidents and injury.
The best advice that I found was to leave your rake and leaf blower in the garage and mulch the leaves where they lay with your powered (preferably riding) lawn mower. The mower will chop the leaves up to protect root systems, preserve soil moisture and help cut down on weeds.
Mulching your leaves also helps wildlife. Insects depend on leaf litter in the winter to provide protective habitat and food. Those insects in turn become winter food for other animals like birds. The only reason to ever pick up leaves at all is to put them into a compost pile to be used later as natural fertilizer.
'It's not just blowers. Chain saws. Tillers. Golf Carts.'
If you're playing a course with gas-powered carts you're doing it wrong...unless it's a beat-up muni course.
Some fancy courses don't allow carts at all...walk or get a caddy : )
Stated Mileage on that F150 is very close to my 1978 F150 V8 4X4. Believe that mileage at your own risk. How about doing the jets at Davos? How about the emissions cost of running down and capturing those illegals?. Hell, you're more at health risk from their diseases.
Fallen leaves provide protection blah blah blah
Fallen leaves are a kindling and a fuel source for fires.
Plenty of electric leaf blowers on the market.
I'll accept that electric leaf blowers that run on wind power generation is especially dangerous to birds.
How about driving to a gym to walk on a treadmill?
Modern internal combustion engines are verrrrry efficient and they have catalytic converters, but the math seems iffy on the F150 claim.
I generally mow/mulch my leaves, but only after I've blown them away from the house. Near the house, they are a pest and fire hazard. They hold moisture against the foundation creating rot.
Leaf blowers are over used, our lawns are over manicured, but I guess all of those illegals have to have something to do, but look at the lawns in any movie from the '60s or '70s, did it bother us that the grass grew long right next to the foundation of buildings? No.
But still, they have their place. Wet leaves in the driveway or on the sidewalk can cause slippery conditions. I don't like it when my lawn is covered in leaves around my house. They are kind of a fire hazard. I use the gas leaf blower very rarely, I mostly use the battery powered one for small jobs. My big problem with the two stroke engines is that they tend to need a lot of maintenance, so when this one finally goes, I may not replace it.
"Hydrocarbon emissions" are not the same thing as CO2 and water vapor, etc, it's unburned fuel and oil. I believe the number unless somebody can prove it wrong. Modern automotive engines are extremely efficient at burning the fuel they use.
The "kicking up dust" argument is kind of ridiculous.
typingtalker said...
I'd like to see the source for that statement. Hydrocarbon emissions are roughly related to the amount of gasoline burned in the engine. A half hour of leaf blowing will burn, in my limited experience, less (much less) than a quart of gasoline. A 2.7L Ford Raptor, at the rated 22 mpg (combined) would burn over 177 gallons of gasoline in a 3900 mile trip.
Hyperbole run wild
Yep. I've got a two stroke string trimmer with a blower attachment that I occasionally use. I'm always amazed at how little gas it uses. I suspect the NYT is counting on 99% of their readership never having mowed a lawn, much less had to deal with leaves.
Now, compare the amount of emissions a leaf-blower makes against Bill Gates' private jet flying from Seattle to Switzerland and back, and get back to me.
"Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre."
I understand your point. I am sensitive to making noise that can bother my neighbors. It is clear that most people aren't, and some people revel in it. We spend our summers in northern Wisconsin and there are a few neighbors up there who drive their jet skis and ATVs in a manner so as to make as much noise as possible. Some people are jerks. There's no fixing that.
Althouse,
If you and Meade get stuck with your F-150 you will need a friend (like me) who has a Toyota 4Runner. They are specifically made to pull Jeeps and Fords out of ditches.
BTW, I hate leaf blowers but need one for my stone patio. I have a battery powered one that is recharged from the magic electrical outlets, thus creating zero carbon output, or so I am told.
Central America Migrants Hardest Hit.
Blogger J Melcher said...
And having skepticism about climate change, along with experience about how the US EPA has fouled up the simple plastic gas can spout...
My hubby found a plastic gas can with a pre-EPA spout at a second-hand store. You would have thought he had found the holy grail.
Hubby, who would be considered elderly, uses a gas leaf blower. He blows the leaves off the sidewalk onto the lawn. Give him a break. Our nearest neighbor is 1/4 mile away so no big deal.
The testing was for non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and carbon monoxide (CO). No test for CO2.
Emissions for those three are very low on a modern vehicle.
If fact, the test found that the the Raptor had lower levels of those hydrocarbons coming out of the exhaust than the ambient air that went into the engine. Yes, the Raptor cleaned the air (of certain chemicals).
Isn't the solution here obvious? It will leave tire tracks in the yard but you'll get rid of the leaves and clean the air!!!
As for the bugs - fuck those guys.
Driving the pick-up truck with a gun in your purse and Meade ridin' shotgun and the borrowed dog in the back has the makings of country song. Involving the Ex and some whiskey would finish out the lyrics.
When I was a kid we raked leaves then burned them in the street. The smell was that of fall for me and 90% of those who did the same. Then the vultures stopped anyone from burning leaves and hired Mexican workmen to drive leaf blowers. Progress.
You're responsible for the people you hire. Hire people who will honor your request to use rakes and brooms. If it's genuinely harder, you'll have to pay more.
But I would support laws banning the 2-stroke machines, and then the people who are in the business of yard work will use something else. If the work is harder, you will have to pay more for it.
I have no sympathy for your "But the workers!" argument. They will be better off anyway.
The thing about people that are against leaf blowers is, they don't actually do any work. They just hire it out and then complain about imperfect results, when they're not complaining about somebody's leaf blower.
We have a battery powered leaf blower, and that sucker is powerful (Makita). You want the porch cleaned? 10 seconds max. Beats a broom hands down any day of the week. Ditto garage, sidewalks, driveway. You got leaves? Let's race, you take the bamboo rake. Loser buys the beer I drank watching you finish.
WHERE do you think, you're blowing them to?
Into a big pile where I can burn them. I love Tennessee.
I hate to side with the tree huggers but I HATE leaf blowers even more. Before I moved to a quieter neighborhood about five months ago, I lived in a suburban area that people moved to because,probably, they'd been sold on the idea that it would be quieter than the nasty big city they were fleeing. Well, guess again, mac. Every morning began a veritable symphony of cacaphony. If it weren't leaf blowers, it was lawn mowers; if not lawn mowers, hedge-trimmers. The only respite would be on weekends, and not always then.
People complain too much. Such that you end up with stupid HoA rules (no lawncare machinery before 7am - so people will start running their equipment at 7:01 and still piss off the neighbors - beware of the rules you make, because people will follow them).
Leaf Blower = non-manual rake and broom.
I guess this NYT neurotic idiot thinks thst witout leaf blowets no one will ever clean up a lawn or sidewalk.
Is there a central casting they get their writers from? "Hello, we need a writer that has no idea that before he was born people did yard work in different ways."
Oh my, what did we do in the 50s and 60s before we could buy leaf blowers, string trimmers, and hedge cutters? I was a kid in the 50s and for my allowance I had to get the leaves off the lawn and burn them at the edge of the road. I used a rake. Lots of leaves, lots of lawn. My dad took pity on me and bought a leaf sweeper. Wow! That thing could sure sweep up a lot of leaves quickly.
Nowadays, kids don't do yard work for an allowance. Dads and Moms hire guys to do the jobs I used to do. Those guys charge by the hour and want to move on to the next yard quickly. They bought leaf blowers and hedge cutters. They made lots of noise but got the job done quickly.
It's really the noise and dust people don't like. But the eco-whackos tacked on the exhaust emissions for good measure.
What this country needs is generations of teens willing to do yard work for for cash in their jeans instead of poking their their cell phones or clicking around Tik Toc.
" They will be better off anyway."
If that was in any way true, those workers would still be using rakes instead of gas powered leaf blowers.
Landscapers are paid by the job. With engine-powered tools, they can use a smaller crew and do more jobs in a given period of time. By doing so, they can increase net profit per job, and thus increase pay per employee, invest more in their tools, add employees to do more jobs, etc.
With manual labor substituting for machines, all of those improvements would be tossed out. You would have fewer jobs done in a given period of time, with more laborers involved, meaning lower average wages across all employees. You would also have fewer jobs because the cost would be prohibitive for many current clients.
The one argument you can't make against gas leaf blowers is the economic one. There's a reason they are in such wide use. and why so many more people can afford to have landscaping services now than when illegal immigration really got going in the 90s.
It's the automation.
But I would support laws banning the 2-stroke machines, and then the people who are in the business of yard work will use something else. If the work is harder, you will have to pay more for it.
I have no sympathy for your "But the workers!" argument. They will be better off anyway.
Nothing says privileged white women who lives in a leafy suburb than this. The Babylon Bee could not have done any better.
'I have no sympathy for your "But the workers!" argument. They will be better off anyway.'
Exactly...sometimes you have to pay a bit more...like I willingly pay more for organic meat.
'People complain too much. Such that you end up with stupid HoA rules (no lawncare machinery before 7am - so people will start running their equipment at 7:01 and still piss off the neighbors - beware of the rules you make, because people will follow them).'
I don't think it's too much to ask that gardeners wait until 8am (in my neighborhood) to fire up their mowers and blowers.
I'd go one step further and restrict contracted maintenance to only a couple of days a month. Right now I hear the racket every goddamn day (but only after 8:01am of course) : )
Leaf blowers give women using them the experience of having a penis.
I'm tired of government telling me what I can buy. I like two-stroke tools. King Jay I of Washington has no business telling me I can't buy those tools. The loony left now wants to ban Internal Combustion Engine cars in 2030 or 2035 and force everyone to buy electric vehicles.
They also want to ban natural gas furnaces, stoves and water heaters. Bellingham has banned new installations of those appliances and hope to force everyone to replace those appliances with electric versions. Electric versions that work worse and cost more than the gas versions. Replacing these appliances will require power upgrades from 200A to 400A service and cost $10,000 or more.
At the same time, they're attacking the grid reliability by banning coal-fired and gas-powered powerplants. Where's the power going to come from to power all these new electric items? The so-called green energy sources of wind and solar are anything but. "Green" power only has a 25-year life and then they must be buried in a landfill. Solar panels leach heavy metals into the ground, so the soil can't be used for farming. Wind mills require cutting down forests to site the wind mills and said wind mills are death factories for birds.
The only things that should be banned are wind and solar power. They're toxic waste dumps.
Ann Althouse said...
You're responsible for the people you hire. Hire people who will honor your request to use rakes and brooms. If it's genuinely harder, you'll have to pay more.
But I would support laws banning the 2-stroke machines, and then the people who are in the business of yard work will use something else. If the work is harder, you will have to pay more for it.
I have no sympathy for your "But the workers!" argument. They will be better off anyway.
You've clearly never actually done any yard work.
If the work takes twice as long, it will cost twice as much. Which will mean not as many people will be wiling to pay for it.
So rich white liberals will be able to get their yards done, and the rest of us will either have to do the manual labor ourselves, or just not have it done.
Which is ok, because we're all just a bunch of peasants whose best use is doing manual labor, right?
"Hire people who will honor your request to use rakes and brooms"
I don't want them to use rakes and brooms. I want them to use the most efficient power tools to get the job done as fast and as cheaply as possible.
So don't change the laws so I can't do that
I once posted that I'd just scythed the lawn early one Sunday morning and somebody said that it was inconsiderate of the neighbors. There's a rule about not cutting the lawn early Sunday morning.
There's probably the same rule about raking leaves.
Random thoughts:
We are, for the first time in many years, enjoying a gloriously beautiful fall.
The trees are magnificent. and compared to many parts of this nation - our trees are not that impressive. It's the great plains.
If you look at old black and white photographs of the front range, it is striking how few trees were here before millions of people moved in.
anyway - we got lots of trees and need lots of leaf pick up. many HOAs rely on immigrant labor to mow, blow and go.
Nobody likes the noise and the toxic smell of leaf blower exhaust. I know it drives me up a wall. hate it.
No way these massive HOA grounds can be raked.
There are battery powered blowers - but they are very expensive and not as powerful or reliable for a full day of work.
Be cool if someone like Elon Musk could invent a leaf blower that is quiet and clean. Blowers are necessary for some things. I know I use my electric blower - with 3 ridiculous 50' extension cords attached - to blow the leaves and needles out of my roof gutters. NOTHING is more efficient for this task.
I like watching the show "NATURE" on PBS. Anyone see it the other night? It was a dude in England photographing bees and studying bees and obsessing over the bees in his yard - and wow - was it fascinating. I thought I understood bee behavior. nope.
Bees need habitat and many live in the ground. So - yeah - this is something that should be considered when dealing with leaves.
On my family's one acre plot we have four smallish dogwoods, three tall tulip poplars, one large maple, three overgrown bradford pears, two redbuds, three young apple trees, and a handful of others. It's quite park-like.
I use our (the horror of it) two gas powered blowers to keep the gutters, deck and drive safe. I use a bagging mower to collect the leaves and grass clippings for the mulch berm. I arrived at this method after nearly killing my back yard with leaves left to decay one year.
Appropriate tools for the job.
...and I also am skeptical that any math was involved in the hydrocarbon comparison in the root article.
There are better ways that banning. I do not want to give the State that kind of power.
Lot of hyperbole here about how hard and how long it takes to rake.
Should I take yard maintenance advice from an NYT reporter who has probably never done a lick of actual work in any yard anywhere?
Hmmmm, maybe not?
As for the "hydrocarbon emissions" factoid (more spewed from a half hour of leaf-blower action than from a 3900 mile trans-continental drive from Texas to Alaska in a gas-guzzling mega-truck), I say, "show me." This is either (a) complete BS, or (b) a trick statement, based on some measurement of such minor significance that nobody would give a toot if you spelled it out clearly. I lean towards option (a), but would be entertained by a complete explication leading toward option (b).
People who say hello to their doormen on their way in or out of their homes every day are probably not qualified to expound on the intricacies of the 4-step yardcare business of "Show, Mow, Blow & Go".
Professora :
"Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) using a leaf-blower? It's quite bizarre.
--------
Meade .. where are you .... what ... can't hear you
A chain saw is a stone-cold necessity. 2 stroke or no, but the battery ones are improving, I guess, and if I didn't live on 5 acres, with my neighbors living on even more, but rather lived in the suburbs, I would buy the electric one. Have a couple batteries so that I could keep working on the firewood when one battery dies.
Don't take my firewood though, I know that's next.
"Nothing says privileged white women who lives in a leafy suburb than this."
Well, that makes no sense. We have lots of trees and we need to deal with the leaves. We don't hire people. We do it ourselves and we do it without leaf blowers. What's privileged in that? If I had no trees and was sitting in the city in an apartment and judging the people who live among trees, you might be able to deploy that insult, but I can't even understand your point.
Why aren't people ashamed to be seen (or heard) driving an F-150? It's quite bizarre.
sneaky writer stealth promoting Ford vehicles : probably F-150 aficianado / salesperson.
bonus points for virtue signalling and profit points sell more trucks
Ann,
We have lots of trees and we need to deal with the leaves.
Ah, but Margaret Renkl says that you don't need to deal with the leaves. The leaves should stay where they fall. All of them. If you remove them -- by any means -- you're destroying all those beneficial bugs -- beneficial to birds, enemies of your plants, not of any direct help to you -- who hibernate or lay their eggs on them. What are you, a bug-murderer? (I am using "bug" as a generic, not referring to the particular insect family implied. Most "bugs" aren't actually bugs.)
I raked lots and lots of leaves as a kid, but now it appears that the raking was also bug-murder. We did worse things than that. We messed up tent caterpillar nests, even though tent caterpillars are unbelievably pretty creatures. We scraped off gypsy moth egg patches into a bucket of kerosene, and then put Tanglefoot on the trees so they couldn't get reinfected. We did all sorts of Nature-loathing stuff.
Which parts of that would you have me disavow now? Some? All?
but I can't even understand your point.
Which is, of course, his point.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
You're responsible for the people you hire. Hire people who will honor your request to use rakes and brooms. If it's genuinely harder, you'll have to pay more.
Gardeners were illegal during the worst of the Silicon Valley lockdowns, but still they came. I asked a neighbor (a lawyer and petty rule slinger) to request her gardeners obey the law, and she literally said she would be embarrassed to do so. So when they came, I called the police. I stated my complaint, and the police hung up on me. Same thing next week, but this time they said they "weren't enforcing that law".
"But its still on the City website"
"Yeah. I don't know, I only work for the police"
You see, I have a leaf blower issue. They drive me crazy. Nobody in my hood would blow their own leafs. They are used year round to blow dust, litter, dog shit, etc onto other people's property, clothes, cars, and lungs.
The Stanford Shopping Center features them in rows like the Roman Legions marching across the parking lot in the morning raising enough dust to block the sun. I bike to work every day through that place, the dust coating my slightly sweaty face.
A Menlo Park Councilman called objections to leaf blowers "racist" back before everyone called everything racist.
I am not in any way a proponent of leaf blowers (though I like the ones convertible to a leaf vacuum), but the New York Times is attacking the wrong target. Instead, they should be loudly denouncing the use of private jets such as those that will soon be arriving at the climate confab in Glasgow. Just think of the environmental savings from grounding all private jets immediately and grinding them up like Obama's Cash for Clunkers Program did.
For a video of a citizen vs professional leaf blower, watch
https://twitter.com/BDSixsmith/status/1447444654820057095
hat tip to David Thompson
The people bitching about leaf blowers are the same people who will call code enforcement on you for an unkempt lawn. Karens, the lot of them.
Besides, in my neighborhood, it's usually undocumented folks using the leaf blowers.
Why are the anti-leaf blower folks so racist and willing to deprive minorities of their livelihood?
shrug Mine's electric. Keeps the leaves out of the pool. We operate it for five minutes at a time, at civilized hours and with awareness of our neighbors' activities.
Also - when we lived in PA, we produced, every fall, 100 landscaping bags of leaves on our one-acre property - no exaggeration - when autumn came. That's too much to mulch.
One year, we raked them; it took far too much of our available time, especially with three kids playing fall ball in three different leagues. One year, we borrowed our neighbor's mulching mower, and still ended up having to bag at least half of the leaves. So for the remaining ten years, we had the landscape guys blow them to the curb, where their giant vacuum cleaner, like the thing the Cat in the Hat uses to clean up the house, sucked them up for making into commercial compost, along with all our neighbors.
Well, that makes no sense.
No comment. Except a chuckle.
I finally ended up purchasing a small gas powered leaf blower 2 years ago. Ironically I've rarely used it to actually blow leaves in the yard but instead primarily use it to quickly clean out my gutters a few times during the year and find it invaluable in that task compared to my prior attempts with hand tools and occasionally a hose. The yard gets raked as needed.
As far as neighborhood noise pollution (or regular pollution for that matter), the development across from my house employs a regiment of landscapers who far out do my pitiful attempts.
Peter Spieker said...
I’ve never understood why some people spend money to go to a gym, and also spend money on a noisy, vile smelling thing like a leaf blower. Why not save the leaf blower money, and instead get some or your exercise in peace the old fashioned way with a rake?
Because it is not exercise that makes you stronger or gets you in better shape.
It is a complete waste of time if those are your goals.
It does get the leaves off your yard though
You may not use the evil leaf blower and use the rake, but the snobbery is really apparent. And the snobbery is the sign of the Affluent White Female Liberal.
All humor aside, on this perhaps the former law professor should reevaluate why some people use this lawn equipment and what the cost of a ban will be to them.
I so heartily agree with the article. It ruins any sense of quiet when everyone around does this at all times of day throughout the week. And I lived in the suburbs and now in a forest, so have to do the work without using the blowers. It really is too an instance of overuse. There's good reasons for leafblowers at times but most overuse them. A suburban house doesn't need an hour of it just to fill the time being paid for with lazy care
To the person who wonders where one blows the leaves to?
I blow them down to the side of the road, pick up the phone, call Algood Tn city hall, tell them I have leaves ready to be vacuumed, and they send the truck around sometime in the next two weeks. They go to the city mulch pile and get converted to mulch.
My brother, on the other hand, blows them to his burn pile, and burns them when he gets a windless day. Because he lives in the county and not the city.
Either way, the problem is solved until next year.
Prediction: the next enviro crusade will be to outlaw all small combustion engines, four-stroke as well as two-stroke.
And what will replace them? Batteries.
I used a leaf blower for the first time last summer and it’s my new go-to tool. I have a chronic disease affecting energy levels, and I can clean my own deck of leaves now. I’m so happy. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a truck though, especially if I were a retired professor. Shameful!
"But I would support laws banning the 2-stroke machines, and then the people who are in the business of yard work will use something else."
What sized engine did you say the F-150 you're looking at comes with?
I use my combination electric leaf blower / leaf vacuum to vacuum up my leaves. If I blow the leaves into a pile, which is akin to herding cats, the wind blows them all over my yard. My energies are better spent sucking the leaves up once and they get mulched at the same time. When the vacuum bag gets full, I dump the mulched leaves into the pile at the curb for the city to pick up. The bonus part of vacuuming / mulching the leaves is that the pile of mulched leaves doesn’t blow around my yard so I don’t need to waste time and energy going after the leaves after Mother Nature has a wind blow through the neighborhood.
It's reasonable to object to noise pollution. Sure, the dust is also bad to breathe.
Althouse's argument that workers denied labor saving tech will benefit is bizarre; if the cost of a service goes up then demand generally goes down. This is not automatically good for the workers who are committed to the line of work.
>>But I would support laws banning the 2-stroke machines, and then the people who are in the business of yard work will use something else. If the work is harder, you will have to pay more for it.
Go for it, Ann! Ban all gas powered lawnmowers, too! And tillers, and trimmers, and chain saws, and... well, just ban everything that annoys you. Freedom is for you, not for other people after all.
We can all cut our grass with push reel mowers, just like great-grandpappy did! So what if it costs more?
And let's ban diesel farm equipment, too. Then we can import half the world's unskilled labor to harvest our food.
And if that makes bread prices skyrocket, well, we can just eat cake, right?
People aren't ashamed to be seen using leaf blowers because they don't believe that they produce more hydrocarbon emissions than driving from Texas to Alaska.
Just vote Demo and have them make a leaf blower mandate
The leaf blower is a two cycle engine, which mixes fuel and air in the crankcase, has no feedback loops, and a simple exhaust.
In contrast, the Raptor is a four cycle engine with closed loop full-authority digital engine control, fuel injection, and catalytic converters.
Consequently, its hydrocarbon emissions are practically zero.
It is interesting that the 2011 Edmunds study claims a Ford Raptor produces 0.276 g of CO2/minute.
Yet the EPA says a 2020 Ford Raptor produces 540 g of CO2/mile. Maybe the EPA is standing behind the idling Raptor and pushing it while inhaling that clean emission? Or maybe that Edmunds test... nah, it couldn't be one test run by journalist in 2011 is still be used in 2021 to push a narrative.
New York Times complaining about leaf blowers is like Eskimos opining about the tropics.
Blogger taco said...
Hydrocarbon emissions are basically just unburned gasoline in gaseous form. The only bad thing hydrocarbons do is make smog, which in 2021 isn't a problem for 99.9% of the country. The fact that cars don't produce smog anymore is a reason to keep using small engines, not a reason to get rid of them!
If that's what's really being said, then, of course I agree, the statement is probably correct. It just isn't that relevant and, since it's so outsized, seems to be included to mislead rather than inform.
It's like labeling foods like cottage cheese "gluten free". Like most foods it's naturally gluten free and so few people are actually sensitive to it. Too many people just don't know any better.
I mow and edge the grass. Some grass ends up in the gutter, on my driveway and sidewalks. I quickly clear them with the leaf blower and blow it into my flower gardens and vegetable garden where I use a four-stroke tiller a couple of times a year to work them into the soil. It's quick and efficient. The blowing of actual leaves is a couple of times a year. When the leaves are thick, I rake them.
It's a nothing compared to train horns, emergency vehicles, Harley's, Steve Harley, Steve Harvey, dogs, dog-whistles, microaggressions, friends with a Prius who like to borrow my pickup for odd jobs.
Leaf blowers are used to keep grass clippings off roads and driveways so Tesla’s and Prius’ don’t slide off the road if it rains.....
Each carbon in the fuel attaches to two oxygen to make CO2 Oxygen weighs about the same as carbon, so the amount of CO2 is three times the weight of the fuel.
The only people I've seen using leaf blowers here in California are the Mexican landscapers.
I think leaves have hydrocarbons in their wax cuticles which cover their outside surface. So when you mulch you create a slow release of those hydrocarbons - a thin mist of deadly vapor arises from your lawn. Perhaps the solution is to get a backhoe and bury the leaves. True, not many people have backhoes now but not many people had computers in the Fifties. They were too big but now they're small and convenient. I'm thinking = small solar-powered backhoes with a tiny fleet of dump trucks. Radio-controlled so you wouldn't need illegals to run them. Of course, you'd still need leaf-blowers to gather the leaves but once the work began it might be possible to mount small solar-powered leaf-blowers on the dump trucks and run the whole thing from your computer. Or maybe rumbas could be trained to move about the lawn with a rake's teeth strapped on the front.
This touches on something I was musing about a couple years ago: "Things that I personally would gladly see society give up to save the world rather than cars, which seem to get all the attention."
Leaf blowers were an early entry. It became a surprisingly long list - dozens of candidates - pretty quickly. I started with hair dryers, for some reason. (Actually the reaaon is that while I do use a hair dryer, it doesn't accomplish much.)
Oh, yeah, one thing I should add. Small engines used in lawn care do leave a lot of unburnt or partially burnt fuel, which contributes to smog. But I'd point out that the claims about the F150 are misleading. It's probably true that if you ran the thing continuously for days it would produce little net smog. But in actual use people typically run their cars for 15-30 minutes at a time. It's possible my knowledge of this subject is outdated, but at least in recent times (15 or so years ago) the elaborate (and expensive and bulky and heavy) exhaust systems attached to cars and trucks don't do much until the exhaust heats up. So in practice cars are heavier polluters than the op-ed suggested. Not that smog is a problem in 2021... we've reduced it by orders of magnitude since the 70s and 80s when smog was a problem. My view is that "pollution" isn't an issue in and of itself, only when it causes actual harm. Incomplete combustion from 2-stroke lawn equipment just doesn't do that.
My leaf blower is electric, which means, here in Montana, it runs on coal, hydro and wind for the most part. Of course I only use it to blow leaves off the patio and sometimes grass clippings off the concrete pad in front of our garage. The leaves that end up on the lawn in the fall I just mulch with our gasoline powered mower.
I don’t have an opinion one way or the other on leaf blowers. What I care about is that it’s illegal in most places to burn leaves. I really miss the smell of burning leaves in the fall.
In my part of the world you couldn’t hire a crew to rake leaves at any price at the moment. I’m not sure an extreme price and full page ad might draw attention but no takers…
"Ah, but Margaret Renkl says that you don't need to deal with the leaves. The leaves should stay where they fall. All of them...."
I'll assume you didn't read the whole article, and it is behind a paywall, but you should not make an assumption like this, and you are wrong about it. She absolutely does not say it.
Just to help: She recommends a mulching mower. That's how you make mulch out of the fallen leaves, not but just leaving them as they are.
So you have 2 ways to deal with the leaves if you want to have a lawn (as opposed to a forest floor). You mulch them with a mower with reduces them to little bits that are beneficial to the grass. Or you rake them (or get someone else to rake them).
"In my part of the world you couldn’t hire a crew to rake leaves at any price at the moment. I’m not sure an extreme price and full page ad might draw attention but no takers…"
I don't know what your part of the world is, but assuming it's the U.S. and what you're saying is the local businesses have their methods and would just reject anyone who wanted rakes used, that's why regulation is needed. If leaf blowers were not permitted, the businesses would have to adjust.
I think one reason for the intensity of some of these comments is that you know in your heart that you have been imposing burdens on your neighbors for many years and you need to believe that you had to do it. You had no choice.
Which is another reason we need regulation: People are dug in, for deep, personal reasons.
@Althouse, do you really believe those last four comments you posted between 5:10 and 5:15? You and Meade can get by without leaf blowers so everyone else must regardless of their situation? Behold! The tolerant liberal!
"Which is another reason we need regulation: People are dug in, for deep, personal reasons."
This is also how men disguised themselves and wound up throwing a bunch of perfectly good tea into Boston Harbor.
I'm tempted to say that I don't think you have metabolized how deep the anger and resentment runs, but I don't believe that. Wait until the gas pumps dry up by rule of law to save mother Gaia and poor people start starving for a belief held by rich people who are fat, happy, completely validated, and free of doubt.
I just hope civilization holds up long enough to see me gone first. It starts with leaf blowers.
Leaf blowers are part of the patriarchy!
"People are dug in"
Pot, kettle.
Your argument is fantasy at the moment. Landscapers won’t ‘adjust’ like the magic you imagine. Labor will just move to drywall or roofing or some other easier and/or paying task. You won’t find a landscaper for any price.
It is already happening. Regulation is what kills business, Ann. You want your rule the climate people want their rules, the bug and worm faction want their thing. So no more tidy suburb…
Good thing Ann doesn’t live near pickleball…
I am also not ashamed to be seen driving my gas guzzling F-150. Where we live just about every house has an F-150 or equivalent sitting in the driveway. Merica baby!
Lets go Brandon!!
Wealthier people might find a crew to have their years picked up. People
married to their landscaper or have free child labor might too. The rest of it goes natural.
Then you’d bitch about that, too…
Don't misunderstand- this is a good conversation about incentives that is constructive to have....
"Fallen leaves provide protection for overwintering insects and the egg sacs of others."
So more leaf blowers, fewer ticks. Good. Let's hear them roar!
If you wonder why you weigh 20 lbs. more than your dad, it's because he raked leaves and used a push mower. I have to laugh when I see a guy riding a zero turn mower in a 1/4 acre to 1/2 acre yard. I put people who use leaf blowers in the same category as idiots who insist on backing their vehicles into a parking space.
Like the Nazis starting with people nobody much cared for, like socialists and gypsies, with the intention to expand to other categories of human beings, I can picture Althouse and her ilk expanding from leaf blowers to string trimmers to lawn mowers to snow blowers. To paraphrase Martin Niemöller, first they came for the leaf blowers …
@Althouse, nor am I going to leave this thread without chiding you for falling so readily for junk science just because it’s in the New York Times.
My heart is burden free when it comes to sound and my neighbors.
I don’t get upset up the small dog next door that barks a lot. If you live in a neighborhood with large yards you should expect that people will have dogs.
I don’t get upset at the school bells that ring all day long or the high school band that practices.
I don’t get upset by the chickens that live one house down from us. This sound actually makes me happy.
I didn’t get upset the year our neighbor’s son spent in the garage learning how to play the drums.
I didn’t get upset with my next door neighbor watching tv in his backyard until we’ll past midnight every night because his wife wouldn’t let him smoke in the house (they moved after fifteen years). I will be honest I did not like the smell of the smoke at all, but it was his yard and marriage so I kept my mouth shut.
You know who complains/ed about all those things? People who complain about blowers. Also, dried out mulch builds up and is very flammable.
If we are force everyone to go back to rakes why don’t we just force everyone to back to to hand washing clothes and dishes. It takes more physical work so it’s exercise (two full days of work for clean clothes yay!). Wouldn’t have to junk them when they break or run them with electricity. Of course those advances and other similar ones allowed for women to get outside jobs. I guess spouses can rochambeau for who stays home.
I love to rake leaves (and grass clipping)! Why any able bodied person would put up with the noise and expense of doing it with a blower instead of a rake is a mystery to me. It isn't strenuous but does provide exercise for your upper half. It is meditative and relaxing. Smoke some weed beforehand if you can't get into this mindset. In case you are interested - huuuge yard, just under an acre.
'I am also not ashamed to be seen driving my gas guzzling F-150.'
Nothing better than sitting up high in a massive King Ranch, surrounded by leather and wood, driving down a country highway with George Jones cranked up on the 15-speaker sound system.
I've spent time in Tulsa. An F-150 is considered an economy car.
Of course, gas is usually $1.50/gallon...
Before there were leaf blowers people used rakes. If one really care about the environment maybe opening the borders to thousands of future leaf blower men wasn't a good idea.
Fallen leaves provide protection for overwintering insects and the egg sacs of others. Leaf blowers, whether electric or gasoline-powered, dislodge the leaf litter that is so essential to insect life — the insect life that in turn is so essential to birds and other wildlife.
The anti-leaf blower rant is justified, but this is nonsense. A landscaper told us that the reason we had mouse and mole problems was that we had grubs in the lawn. Getting rid of fallen leaves can be a public health measure (though we will probably put off doing it as long as possible).
Another thing---it is kind of silly that the author says leaf blowers are dangerous because they kick up dust, then she goes on to advocate using a mulching mower to reduce leaf litter. I'm guessing she's never actually used a mulching mower. Not only does it produce far more dust, but it'll swirl around the operator instead of being pushed away like it would with a blower.
Everyone should buy an F150, fill the back with hand raked leaves, then drive to Texas. All the leaves should be gone by the time you get there.
Then you can have a BBQ dinner cooked over a woodfired smoker before you drive home.
reader at 10:04 am...HEAR!! HEAR!! So sick of intolerant people. My yard, my choice. Regulate this.
Couple of notes:
3900 miles is maybe one-twelfth of the useful tread life for the truck. So it would be spewing (love that word) microscopic particles of rubber from scrubbing on the pavement. That would have to be counted.
The prevailing wind blows the leaves off our lawn. I rake maybe once a year to get up twigs and so forth. But the leaves go away without my effort. Is there some kind of indulgence I can buy?
Couple of notes:
3900 miles is maybe one-twelfth of the useful tread life for the truck. So it would be spewing (love that word) microscopic particles of rubber from scrubbing on the pavement. That would have to be counted.
The prevailing wind blows the leaves off our lawn. I rake maybe once a year to get up twigs and so forth. But the leaves go away without my effort. Is there some kind of indulgence I can buy?
I could see a regular personal handyman agreeing grudgingly to use a rake, but you’re not picking up a bunch of guys from the Home Depot Parking lot who would do that. Not twice, at least.
So if you have a personal handyman, don’t forget that 1099 so you and he don’t rip off other taxpayers. And check the IRS list for people using fake social security numbers. Which also happens when you pick up guys in the Home Depot parking lot.
If we’re going to build a big bureaucracy to control lawn equipment, someone’s gotta pay for it.
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