Published: July 17, 2008 05:35 pm            

Don’t Cut that Grass! Don’t Smoke that Cigarette! Or Build that Bonfire!

Driving gasoline burning cars is bad, but cutting your grass is worse, according to officials in California’s San Joaquin Valley. A study shows that trees and plants in the Valley produce four times more hydrocarbons, at 360 tons per day, than cars and trucks. Read that again: trees and plants produce more pollutants than cars and trucks. When the vegetables are harvested, and the plants “damaged,” the hydrocarbons emitted increase even more. This also happens when homeowners cut their lawn. Here at the Public Interest Institute we wonder what they would think of corn harvesting or of our many acres of pristine lawn. Not only are we making the plants emit more hydrocarbons, we are also burning fossil fuels and emitting CO2.

The officials have not yet regulated how many trees private property owners plant or when they cut their grass. However, we should not be surprised if homeowners living at even street numbers are allowed to cut grass only on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and odd numbered addresses on Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday. Never mind that the oxygen and food produced by plants is critical to sustaining the entire world. The climate change movement and the “Nanny State” strike again.

Consider the recent actions of the Iowa Legislature. Smoking is no longer allowed in privately-owned businesses because of “Nanny State” concerns about lung cancer and the power of the anti-tobacco lobby. Lawmakers found that “environmental tobacco smoke causes and exacerbates disease in nonsmoking adults and children.” The danger was enough to “warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places, places of employment, and outdoor areas in order to protect the public and employees.”

However, studies cited in the book Please Don’t Poop in My Salad document that not only is the risk of death from exposure to secondhand smoke “highly implausible,” but that “the odds of a life-long smoker dying prematurely” from a smoking related disease is “about 12 to 1.” Therefore one in 12 life-long smokers would die before the age of 75. The U.S. EPA has established a risk ratio of 1.19 for someone exposed for 40 years to a pack-a-day smoker. A risk ratio of less than 1.3 is considered “random."

Supporters of these bans would feel at home in the office of the Seattle, Washington, Director of Tobacco Prevention programs, who said in 2006, “Americans think they have a lot of rights they really don’t…smoking is one of those things…you have no right to smoke.”

Also in Seattle, the global climate change advocates and the “nannyists” have teamed up and are trying to ban bonfires on the beaches. The Park Department wants to reduce bonfires this year and then ban them. The logic is that carbon emissions produced by beach fires “blatantly” contribute to global warming. When told of the potential ban one park user simply rolled her eyes, and another said, “They have to try to take everything away.” One Seattle City Council member also appears to be skeptical, saying on her website, “I believe that we have a God-given right to have bonfires on the beach. Beach bonfires are not killing the planet.”

The term “nanny state” was first used in 1965 in The Spectator magazine. A “nanny state” is one where government takes a hyper-interest in micro-managing the welfare of citizens, shielding them from injurious and irrational behavior. In today’s highly regulated world this includes regulating or banning of items and activities as innocuous as scented strips promoting milk, water in animal bowls, sledding on public hills, “for sale” signs in car windows, low-rider jeans, “unattractive” tomatoes, genetically modified pet fish, and iPods. A recent book by David Harsanyi, Nanny State, provides a compelling discussion of the increasing control government has over our every action, all in the name of protecting us from unsafe, unhealthy, immoral, or simply politically incorrect behaviors.

Whether it is cutting your grass, smoking your cigarette, or making a bonfire, “they” are against it. Unfortunately, “they” are our friends and neighbors, our elected and appointed officials who think “they” should be in charge of your life instead of you. The micro-management of every aspect of our lives by the “nannies” is a significant threat to our God given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

However, if you don’t feel like cutting your grass, you have a politically correct excuse. You’re not being lazy. You’re saving the earth!

        

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