The danger to humanity from its own brutal treatment of nonhuman life grows daily. This mistreatment includes suppression of plant growth to create close-cropped, monoculture ornamental lawns, an invention of imperialists that was spread to the United States by slaveholders. The resulting dead zones for insects, and life that preys on insects, ratchet humanity closer to its doom. We won't survive if we destroy the two million species currently threatened with extinction. If you doubt my forecast, I sympathize, but I ask, why do we take the chances we do by destroying life with poison and mutilation at great expense to create a symbol of uniformity and the threat of being cut down if you stick out? For a specific example, why do we do this in such colossal fashion at Collins Circle, the main entrance to the University at Albany (SUNY), a school that prides itself on its diversity? I suspect we're just being thoughtless. For the next graduation ceremony, let's show the visitors a new Collins Circle field, at least part of which has grown out into the chaotic riot of life and color that is Nature, humanity's Mother. Below are communications on this topic to Dr. Havidán Rodríguez, President of UAlbany, a list of reasons for preferring meadow to lawn, and other resources. I suggest you join me by sending Pres. Rodríguez your own thoughts at this address or by writing to any leader in your life.
Open letter to the UAlbany community
Emails to Pres. Rodríguez
Video messages to Pres. Rodríguez
Times Union commentary on lawns
Art for Tee Shirts and Lawn Signs
List of Reasons for Letting Lawn Revert to Meadow
We force Mother Earth to wear much of Her hair short. Please consider letting most lawn acreage revert to meadow for the following reasons.
1 We don't have the right to tell Mother Earth how to wear Her hair, unless we have an important need. Because we like Her to look a certain way is not sufficient reason. If we need the lawn to play a game, let's think about whether our pleasure justifies how much we take from other life to achieve it. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't.
2 Insects don't need people, but they do need meadows. People need wild insects, on the other hand, for many reasons, including more effective pollination than honeybees can provide to certain crops.
3 Peninah Murage, researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says, "There are the services that natural ecosystems provide, and as a result of those services, natural systems support human health. A lot of the things Nature does for us, it does for free. Because it does it for free, we don't really value it." Does Nature sound like someone in your own life? I don't know about you, but she sounds a lot like my Mom. Go figure. Let's make Mother Nature's job supporting us a little easier, for our own sake, if not Hers.
4 "The Boston Consulting Group estimates that ecosystem services are worth around 140 trillion euros [$150 trillion] every year, about twice global GDP." Why would we not want more of those services? We can get more by doing less, by not working so hard to erase Nature, by, for example, letting lawn revert to meadow.
5 Diversity in biological systems provides stability. As conditions change, a diverse system can grow in some parts and shrink in others to respond. Diverse plants support diverse insects, and the two together support diverse wildlife of other kinds. Uniformity may increase efficiency or provide suitability for some purpose, but at the cost of increased risk of systemic collapse.
6 Lawns perpetuate the values of imperialists and slaveholders from the 18th century. Lawns were invented by the British and French aristocracy of the time and brought to the United States by Jefferson himself and Washington's landscapers. These were people who thought that they should dominate certain other people and Mother Nature for their own benefit. People today are taking down the statues of imperialists and slaveholders but cling to lawns, which transmit the same values as the statues, but in a far more insidious way.
7 In order to suppress Nature, we use poisons. Pesticides and herbicides are bad for all living beings, including people.
8 Grassland with biological diversity fights the climate crisis better than monoculture grass by sequestering more carbon.
9 I confess that lawns look good to me and make me feel good. However, I know why they do this. First, the very wastefulness of lawn cultivation suggests safety to me. If reasonable people throw away resources with such abandon, it means that there must be plenty, right? Well, certain people have plenty, and many others don't have enough. Furthermore, to get so much, the people with plenty have been drawing down resources faster than the resources can recharge. That can't last.
10 The second thing that feels good to me about a lawn is that it looks like a place where there's nothing I should fear. In particular, there could be more ticks and rodents in a meadow than a lawn, though biodiversity can be present in shorter grasses, according to this author. However, the reason lawns look safe is precisely the reason they are so dangerous when there is too much land given over to them. The scarcity of life in lawns is an erasure of wildlife. The system of living beings on which our own lives depend cannot withstand too much erasure. It will fall at a moment we can't predict accurately. Its collapse is our end, so we would be foolish to risk pushing things much farther. A blind pursuit of safety is always catastrophic if it keeps going. We need to stop.
11 Some may fear for the livelihoods of the large number of people who work in the industry that suppresses wild plants, insects, and many birds with lawns. Is it not a kindness to save people from working very hard their entire lives at making the world worse? I think that most people in the lawncare industry will soon be grateful to take up other important work in our changing society. The large number of people who worked with horses found new work as our transportation systems changed around the start of the 20th century. Human calculators moved on to more creative endeavors as electronic calculators became common around the middle of that century. Many bank tellers and cashiers are changing to new lines of work today.
12 Won't it be good not to have to work so hard tending lawns? The difficulty we have getting them to grow the way we want might clue us in to the fact that lawns are a bad idea.
13 If people get rid of their lawns, they will see that they have the power to do something meaningful to preserve our civilization and our species. They will also find that they enjoy doing the things that promote the survival of their children and themselves.
14 It will be much more fun to look at what Mother Nature chooses to grow than at land that's barren, apart from one kind of life condoned by lawn enthusiasts.