The lush lawn is dead in the parched Southwest.
My father was an early member of a group now known disparagingly as “ultra-lawn people.”
“High,” as everyone called him, was dedicated, body and soul, to the Sisyphean task of trying to maintain a lawn full of lush St. Augustine grass in hot, dry Texas. He planted, watered, fertilized, watered, mowed, watered, fought bugs and brown patch, watered, re-planted, watered…ad nauseum.
Some years, he won. Other years, nature rolled him.
High departed his lawn and this Earth well before climate change turned Texas from merely hot and dry into scorched and parched.
I know he would’ve denied it at first, but I think even he would’ve finally given in to today’s new reality: In our drought-ravaged Southwest, the lush lawn is dead. Literally and ethically.
From Texas to Southern California, city after city is adapting to nature. They’re policing neighborhoods to impose big fines on excessive lawn watering, paying homeowners and businesses to rip out grass and replace it with desertscapes, and even outlawing grass yards in new developments.
And, it’s working. A pioneering 2003 turf-removal rebate program in Las Vegas, for example, has now pulled 165 million feet of thirsty lawn grass out of the area, saved more than 9 billion gallons of water, and cut water use by a third, even as the population has mushroomed.
Such an effort would’ve been treated as heresy only a decade ago, but now it’s simply considered the right thing to do. This isn’t merely an environmental adjustment, but a fundamental ethical shift, especially among younger people.
The idea that green lawns are exercises in ecological narcissism has taken root in this arid and politically conservative region — demonstrating that conservatism really can be about conserving. Mother Nature and future generations will be grateful.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
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