That would make objective sense. It is not the American way.
If we decide quieter cars are less safe for pedestrians, we’ll mandate noisemakers on electric cars instead of establishing a minimum noise level for all cars. So gas cars are allowed to be totally silent.
If we decide particulate pollution is a huge problem, we’ll ban certain diesel engine uses, instead of establishing maximum particulate outputs for all fuel burning processes. Then if anyone develops a diesel engine that doesn’t output high levels of particulate, they’ll still be illegal.
If we decide incandescent light bulbs use too much energy, we’ll ban incandescents, instead of establishing a maximum consumption per lumen output for all illumination devices. Then when low consumption incandescents are developed, they’ll still be illegal.
You can probably go on with this forever… it’s a thing we do.
I’m also rather intuitive, and figured someone would see that as ‘centaur’
ETA Disclaimer:
I’d look much more like a pudgy, chestnut Crabbet Arabian. Nice and round, with lotsa bone
ETA The above Handsome Chappie is Mesaoud, one of the foundation sires of the Crabbet Arabian Stud, bred in Egypt by Ali Pasha Sherif, imported to England by the Blunts in 1891 - wikipedja
Far be it for me to blow off providing info about such an impressive, influential, antiquated Arabian.
So take that look out of here it doesn’t fit you
Because it’s happened doesn’t mean you’ve been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted
I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can’t stay here with every single hope you had shattered, see ya
I’m not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe
And see the sun in wintertime
A great first step. As pointed out by others, lawns in desert climates are a ridiculous idea. But I’d widen that out to say that lawns aren’t a great idea in any climate. I realize that individual measures to reduce water consumption and carbon emissions are a drop in the bucket, but lawns infuriate me. And that includes golf greens.
Oh man, I wish I could give this post 100 likes. I love Big Country and was just listening to them last night. The song “Harvest Home” was stuck in my head all day yesterday.
The state banned the use of groundwater for irrigating new golf courses in 1980. I can’t find anything on restrictions on the use of other fresh water sources (e.g. Colorado River water from the Central Arizona Project (CAP)). I did find a few articles where state and local officials were pressuring pre-1980 courses to cut water use.
Many courses here make use of recycled water for irrigation. I can’t find any data on what percentage of water that amounts to. I did find that 23 courses in Scottsdale use recycled water.
The city of Mesa in the Phoenix metropolitan area is finishing up a water recycling project. The city will provide recycled water to the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) to be used for agricultural irrigation. In exchange, Mesa will get a portion of GRIC’s allocation of CAP water.
My yard has no grass. I can’t take credit for that, it was that way when I bought my house. Many HOAs in the region place a restriction on the maximum amount of grass a home can have.
The Palo Verde nuclear power plant (largest in the US) to the west of Phoenix is cooled by recycled water, the only only nuclear plant in the world to do this.
Obviously, Arizona needs to do even more to conference water, but I just wanted to provide some facts about what’s already being done.
Presumably only because people insist on watering the darn things?
Here in UK we have grass in our garden (hesitate to say ‘lawn’) and it is never watered. If it gets brown in summer, so be it. As @VeronicaConnor has pointed out, it always comes back when dryness abates.
Aye kun spel rel gud; huked ahn fonix werks fer meh.
(My grammer’s dead, along with my granper, sadly; both had long rich lives.)
(also /silly, in case that wasn’t obvious enough. )
Especially bermuda grass, which is what a lot of people out here have, because it’s damn near impossible to kill without turning one’s yard into a SuperFund site or as stated, removing all the top soil AND putting barriers to other yards to keep their grass from invading.
… and that will get the Code Enforcement people on you, courtesy of all the neighborhood busybodies calling in complaints about the ‘unkept yard’. Or code enforcement officials doing periodic drive by inspections, which is why I was out in my front yard back in the middle of summer two years ago cutting down the two dead orange trees that I had planned on decorating for Halloween and then cutting them down when it was cooler out…
Still, 200 golf courses is ridiculous in an area where private citizens are now legally forbidden from having grass lawns, even if some of those golf courses use recycled water.
As an aside “recycled water” is an increasingly meaningless term anyway since all water is recycled naturally and we’ve long since had the technology to reclaim and purify municipal sewage back into drinking water. Every drop that goes toward a golf course could be better used elsewhere.
The US is being deforested by developers who take down trees and wildlands and put up buildings and grass. So, for me, grass is a wasted opportunity where they choose to have an omnipresent invasive species that provides minimal support to fauna or other flora and “requires” fertilizer and insecticides that kills our streams, lakes and beaches. Also, it’s presence means it’s important for some to mow it early in the AM on weekends, and/or spend hours using a noisemaker to blow leaves off their lawns.
ETA: people in many US areas think brown grass is unsightly, so they waste water and use fertilizers to keep it artificially green. It’s especially hard in desert regions, but people invest a lot of resources to do so, it’s a status symbol.
Veg gardens are best off in back yards - they’re safer from prying eyes and picking fingers. Edible flowering plants work in front yards, especially when the neighbors don’t know they’re edible!
Wanna really piss off the neighborhood? Plant bamboo. Mom told me if U plant a single bamboo plant, you must surround it with sixteen foot high - and deep! - stone walls to keep it from determinedly marching all the way to the sunset!
