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They're called leaves for a reason. (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Or realize that there is still tons of land that isn't maintained and is actually a better habitat for bees anyway. Even in your own neighborhood ther is plenty of places that don't get tended to. This is really just a diversion to redirect people from all the things the ag industry does that harm the bees on a scale us individuals, even collectively can't hold a candle to. Remember when they tried to convince us that leaving the water running while we brush our teeth was a major usage of fresh water. But again, compared to the ag industry, all household water use is a drop in the bucket.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure but.. It's still a really good advice and I'm glad someone posted it. I rarely rake away leaves for reasons like this, and this gives me one extra reason to not do so.

That doesn't mean you're wrong, but we can all be right : fight the important battles for large scale effects while enjoying the small scale effects of individual actions.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think that they're just railing against the smoke show that would have us believe that our individual actions are more to blame than industry as a whole. You can recycle, you can drive a electric car, you can even generate your electricity and store it locally in a battery and not even use the grid but even if we all did that without change to heavy industry we are still screwed.

One small example of this is how big tobacco and big oil have used exactly the same tactics to distract us from what's really going on and protect their profits regardless of the harm to us as a species.

Would you like to know more? https://www.eenews.net/articles/big-tobacco-had-to-pay-206b-is-big-oil-next/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, it totaly woshed right over them. They are playing games with human emotions to protect and increase profits. These kind of things were the early version of the algorithms that are designed to keep you glued to content so you see more ads.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

For insects, pristine lawns are a huge problem. This isn't quite comparable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's been a while since I've seen the data, but isn't the American lawn considered a major biome now? At least compared to wildlands.

Between lawns and monocropping in the US, yes we need to fight back against those activities and favor rewilding.

For those reading, start by introducing native plants to your parcel. Let nature do it's thing. Then, consider going vegan since animals need multiple times the amount of land and water to grow: resources to grow the plants, then resources to grow the animals. Then, consider donating to organizations like The Xerces Society, the Wildlife Conservation Network, or MarAlliance. Better yet, find something local to you and join up!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You either missed the point, or you have fallen for the propaganda. Industry is a much higher % of the problem than your lawn. But they want to distract you by making you think you should do something with your yard to fix things. When the majority fail to do anything, they will feel like, well I didn't do my part, so I can't demand industry do anything. This allows them to keep destroying the environment. It's a great tactic, worked well with plastic for a very long time. Your just helping them. Instead vote for people who care about us and the planet more than corporate profits. Regulate the industries and support lab grown meats.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

After looking into the data, I'd probably agree with you.

The US USDA ERS estimates that urban area land use is the lowest of all categories, but is rising. Yet NASA found that turfgrass represents the largest irrigated crop in the US, 3 times as much as corn.

I will have to say that the research on this is quite outdated, with newer research seemingly coming from industry groups associated with the golf sector and giving rise to conflicts of interest.

But I generally agree with your sentiment. Place the blame on the individual, the citizen, rather than the corporations and economic industries. I'd tend to agree with you, although I wonder if the issues are necessarily mutually exclusive. Sure we might prioritize the latter, but the former gives people tangible reasons to point to and continue in their advocacy for the latter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

It's the last part where we disagree. I think that pushing efforts that make people feel like they did thier part makes them complacent to pushing against industry or others. In some cases the individual effort touted is something that few people will end up doing because of how inconvenient it is. So they will feel they can't demand better of industry and others. And in the case of this leaves stuff, it is something that excuses inaction, so people will feel like they did their part so the result isn't thier fault, and thus not thier problem anymore. And of course everyone loves a post supporting inaction because it makes them feel better about themsleves for not getting around to something they thought they should do. That makes it very popular. As such it drowns out messages about the larger causes and solutions.