Tax Lawns And Incentivize Gardens

Fixing the climate crisis literally starts in our backyard

North America has a lawn fetish. Our lawns cover more than 40 million acres of land. 63,000 square miles. We love our grassy flats. We re-seed them, water them, weed them, pesticide them, mow them, and very occasionally, put a lawn chair on top of them.

We water our lawns with 200 gallons of freshwater per day per person. We apply more pesticide per acre than commercial agriculture, and of the top thirty brands, thirteen are linked to birth defects and twenty-six to liver or kidney damage. Every year, we spill more than 17 million gallons of gas on them. Each hour pushing a lawnmower emits as much as driving a car for 100+ miles, and spit out benzene, 1,3 butadiene, and formaldehyde, which cause various lymphomas and leukemias.

And we’re not growing local food, capturing carbon, absorbing pollution and filtering toxins, retaining groundwater, creating shade and future heating fuel, encouraging habitats and re-wilding nature, building soil, securing and localizing our food supply, halting global warming, or in any way moving toward environmental sustainability.

What in the world is wrong with us?

And more importantly, how can we force ourselves to change our idiotic ways?

Smash me with a stick, bribe me with a carrot

What would it cost for you to give up your lawn forever?

• Public shaming?

• A friend’s help over the weekend?

• An old granny to teach you the ancient ways?

Would you plant a vegetable patch or some fruit trees to avoid a $1,000 fine and receive a $1,000 tax refund to invest in seeds and fertilizers and garden hoses?

Of course you would.

We could eliminate literally 100% of lawns globally if we raise the stakes and rewards high enough.

And here’s the really fun part:

What works for lawns can work for all anti-earth activities.

This is how we actually save the planet

The carrot-and-stick approach should be used to drive all anti-nature behaviors out of existence immediately.

Tax plastic, incentivize package-free.Tax carbon, incentivize carbon capture.Tax fossil fuel, incentivize sustainable energy.Tax pesticides, incentivize organic food.Tax clear-cutting, incentivize forest protection.Tax overseas shipping, incentivize local production.Tax multinational monopolies, incentivize local independent producers.Tax river/air/land pollution, incentivize pollution-free.Tax soil depletion, incentivize soil creation.

Transition not happening fast enough? Triple the tax, triple the incentive.

Let’s do some engineering

Can we face facts? Humans are unbelievably selfish and equally incredible at self-preservation. Carrots and sticks are the fastest way to change our dangerous global behavior.

Extreme libertarians will moan that this is social engineering, but they’re missing the greater point: that civilizations need positive engineering, and that if we don’t set ourselves up for success, there won’t be a society left to engineer anyway.

Our local organic farm shops should have an insurmountable competitive advantage over Amazon, Walmart, Kraft, Nestle, P&G, Unilever, and Cargill.

It’s time to ditch lawns and dig gardens.

It’s time to smash the earth-killing system.

It’s time for sustainability.

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