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Climate Town
America's Dumbest Crop
America's Dumbest Crop
Climate Town
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32:27 · Oct 2, 2025
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In
the
United
States,
we're
proud
of
the
crops
we
grow.
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In the United States, we're proud of the crops we grow.
0:03
We've got a nation of hungry Americans and even hungrier livestock.
0:07
And god damn it, our crops keep this great country fed.
0:10
Except, of course, for our number one most irrigated crop.
0:14
Yes, sir.
0:15
At the very top of the list of plants we pour massive amounts of
0:18
water and resources into is a crop that's not eaten,
0:21
juiced, smoked, or consumed in any way.
0:24
I'm talking, of course, about lawns.
0:29
Yeah, >> that's right.
0:29
The stuff we plant outside of our homes, around our office parks,
0:33
on the sides of highways,
0:34
and on approximately 40 million acres of prime American land is quickly
0:40
and quietly sucking up our precious resources
0:43
while simultaneously being actively harmful to our health
0:46
and environment.
0:48
What a deal.
0:49
And I'm not out here hating on just the concept of grass.
0:52
I one time dislocated my shoulder playing 8 hours of ultimate frisbee.
0:56
And this Saturday, I'm getting day drunk on PBR in my cousin's yard.
1:00
Grass can be great if you use it.
1:04
The problem with America is
1:06
that we've basically made a ton of useless grass mandatory.
1:10
>> The city of Indianapolis tonight is warning people to cut their grass
1:13
or face a big fine.
1:15
City inspectors are now measuring blades of grass with yard sticks.
1:19
>> Native Long Island plants grow without chemicals and help absorb rain water.
1:23
But the mayor says the transformation is troubling.
1:26
>> You have to call it what it is.
1:27
That front yard looks hideous.
1:29
>> She was arrested
1:30
and spent a week in jail for what started out
1:32
as an HOA complaint over her lawn.
1:35
>> Yeah.
1:36
Homeowners associations force people to grow grass under penalty of fines.
1:40
Countless municipal codes include vague anti-weeds legislation
1:44
that prevents people from having more interesting plants than just regular lawn grass.
1:48
And there's enormous social
1:49
and cultural pressure for everyone to have a thriving little grass patch
1:53
or else they're a bad person.
1:55
>> They got the property.
1:56
God give it to him.
1:57
God expects you to take care of what he gives you.
2:00
>> And even if you don't personally own a lawn, cities, states,
2:03
and the federal government are constantly spending taxpayer money on grass whose entire job
2:09
is to exist.
2:10
And we should put big air quotes around exist
2:13
because maintaining this grass is also one of the dumbest things we do.
2:18
These grasses are not native to the United States,
2:20
which means we often have to coddle them just to keep them alive.
2:24
You ever heard of Kentucky bluegrass?
2:26
Well, it's not from Kentucky.
2:28
It's not even from America.
2:30
So, you take your commie lawn and you go back to your commie country.
2:35
And then there's the equipment necessary to keep all these lawns on life support.
2:39
Lawnmowers and other tools produce a staggering 30 million tons of carbon dioxide every
2:44
year and generate almost
2:46
as much particulate air pollution
2:47
as all the cars in America.
2:49
That's some great hustle out there, boys.
2:52
I'm really proud of you.
2:53
And then there's the water.
2:55
Grass is so thirsty
2:56
that about a third of all of our residential water goes straight to keeping
3:00
grass alive.
3:02
Well, that's not exactly true because in drier areas,
3:05
it can be up to 60% of residential water on grass.
3:10
We're also dumping buckets of chemicals onto our lawns to make sure
3:13
that nothing but one kind of grass grows.
3:16
And those chemicals tend to make a beline for the groundwater
3:19
and create a whole bunch of problems for fish
3:21
and wildlife or just stay local
3:23
and poison the people who come into contact with it.
3:26
And it gets even worse.
3:28
America's obsession with putting little grass fields nobody uses all over the place is
3:33
actually costing us dearly.
3:35
And in a time
3:35
when we need to be careful about how we're using our precious resources,
3:39
forcing the country to spend billions of dollars to grow a crop
3:43
that we don't use
3:44
and is actively poisoning us is probably not the smartest policy.
3:48
But maybe there's something we can do about it.
3:50
Maybe.
3:50
Hi, I'm Raleigh Williams,
3:52
a guy with a climate science and policy degree and a pretty decent backhand.
3:56
I'll catch that later.
3:58
And this is a video about lawns, the dumbest crop we grow.
4:02
Welcome to Climate Town.
4:24
Now, extremely rich people have been obsessed with lawns for centuries.
4:28
First, it was a big ass clearing where you could show off how many
4:31
hungry goats and sheep you had.
4:33
Then, aristocrats in France
4:34
and England used their lawns to show off how many slaves they had.
4:38
Obviously, wealthy American land owners like the sound of that,
4:41
and they began maintaining lawns of their own.
4:44
George Washington had one.
4:45
Thomas Jefferson had one.
4:47
Basically, if you got to rap in the Hamilton musical,
4:50
chances are you had a nice patch of grass to call your own.
4:53
No way.
4:54
All right.
4:55
Yeah.
4:55
But despite a desire to emulate aristocratic lawns,
4:58
they were very rare and extremely difficult to maintain in the US.
5:02
If the work requirement wasn't bad enough,
5:04
the climate over here made it extremely difficult to even get
5:07
that grass to grow.
5:08
None of these lawn grasses we now associate with the American suburbs are native
5:12
to the United States,
5:13
which means they'd need a little help from Uncle Sam.
5:16
As the demand grew for big grass-covered public spaces like Central Park
5:21
and Prospect Park and the earliest US suburbs,
5:24
the US Department of Agriculture took it upon themselves to decide on the best
5:28
grass to take over the country.
5:29
Then the Hatch Act in 1887 quadrupled the USDA budget
5:34
and they used that money to develop honest to god government testing facilities for
5:39
grass.
5:39
Then right around the same time,
5:41
Grass would get another helping hand from something else old
5:44
and British and an absolute pain in the ass.
5:46
No, I'm not talking about ricketetts.
5:49
It's golf.
5:56
The first organized golf courses in the US opened in the 1880s,
6:00
and by the year 1900, there were already almost a thousand of them.
6:04
And good lord, these required some serious grass.
6:09
With golf exploding in popularity,
6:11
a few courses banded together and founded the United States Golf Association,
6:15
also known as the USGAA.
6:17
And the USGAA was researching grass varieties at the exact same time
6:22
as the USDA.
6:24
Interesting.
6:25
And actually, if you look at the logos and you compare them,
6:29
the only difference is a single letter.
6:31
And if you just take the G and rotate it a little bit,
6:33
and then you take the stem
6:34
and you sort of smush it down into the D,
6:37
it's the same letter.
6:38
They're the same organization.
6:41
Okay, they're not sorry, they're not the same, but they do sound pretty similar.
6:45
And perhaps more importantly, they have worked together quite a lot,
6:50
specifically to develop grass varieties that could be used on golf courses and lawns.
6:54
By the 1920s, golf was so popular that the richest man in the world,
6:59
John D.
6:59
Rockefeller, got all dressed up
7:01
and hired the only man with a working camera in the state of Florida
7:04
to film him.
7:05
Oh, topped the absolute out of the ball.
7:09
My god, how do you not get a second take of that?
7:12
You're John D.
7:13
Rockefeller.
7:14
You own America's economy.
7:15
You can't get a videographer to make it look like you've played golf once
7:19
in your life.
7:20
Whatever.
7:21
You can't worry about that because right after the roaring 20s,
7:24
it's the Great Depression.
7:25
Everyone's struggling.
7:26
Nothing's growing.
7:27
And America wasn't slapping grass all over the place
7:30
because they couldn't afford to waste the money until uh oh,
7:34
everybody's dad, you've been waiting for it.
7:36
It's your time to shine.
7:38
It's World War II over the dusty trail and those songs are rolling along.
7:47
>> Now, I don't know how much you know about World War II,
7:50
but America pretty much kicked that thing's ass.
7:53
And as we lifted ourselves out of wartime and free of the Great Depression,
7:56
a few things lined up to give lawns their final push to dominance.
8:00
During the war, the US government needed to make a bunch of TNT
8:04
and other explosives.
8:05
And one of the key ingredients was nitrogen.
8:08
So they built a bunch of facilities that could isolate nitrogen.
8:10
And my god, the bombs they made.
8:13
After the war, we didn't have as many people to blow up,
8:15
but we still had all these nitrogen facilities.
8:18
And do you know what else uses a lot of nitrogen?
8:21
synthetic plant fertilizer.
8:27
>> Also, during the war,
8:28
we were developing a bunch of chemicals
8:30
that would either kill people directly
8:32
or kill plants so people couldn't eat
8:34
and then they'd still die just a little later.
8:36
After the war, those same chemicals could be put to work killing our new
8:39
enemy,
8:40
plants that we thought were bad. the front day and night and fight.
8:46
>> And also also between the GI Bill giving out millions of cheap home
8:50
loans and a general desire to move out of the cities,
8:53
we built an insane amount of suburban housing all over the country.
8:57
Developers would rip out the trees and slap together a bunch of homes,
9:00
but then they'd have a big up wasteland of dirt and houses.
9:03
>> Oh, they're always doing things like that around here.
9:06
It goes on all the time.
9:07
Instead of waiting years for trees and vegetation to grow back,
9:11
developers would just cover the whole thing up with some nice quick grass.
9:18
>> They had an almost sexual attraction to grass.
9:21
Listen to the way they used to talk about it.
9:23
>> People love grass.
9:24
The sight of it inspires and relaxes them.
9:26
Its velvet rug rounds out the earth's sharp edges.
9:30
Grass is nature's vital gift to man.
9:32
It covers and forgives man's mistakes and in constancy.
9:35
Grass is immortal, vigorous, aggressive.
9:39
>> I sure would like to some grass.
9:41
>> Pretty soon, anyone buying a house in the suburbs was also being inducted
9:45
into the cult of grass.
9:47
And more and more of America began to look like this.
9:53
There's a famous suburb on Long Island called Levittown,
9:56
where they built 17,000 houses in the span of just four years,
10:00
each with their own brand new lawn, effectively creating the modern suburban development.
10:05
They apparently even offered to reseed your lawn for free the next spring after
10:09
you moved in.
10:10
Then they did the same thing in Pennsylvania,
10:12
dropping another Levittown just north of Philadelphia.
10:15
Oh, and there's one more thing.
10:17
>> We were looking for a place to buy a home.
10:19
We looked at Levittown and we liked the homes here.
10:22
We liked the advantages
10:23
that Levittown seemed to offer in uh comparison to other cities
10:28
and we understood that it was going to be all white.
10:30
We were very happy to buy a home here.
10:34
Yeah, there was a lot of that too.
10:37
Anyway, by 1960 the US had 30 million home lawns
10:41
and we were adding half a million more every year.
10:44
And the worst part about those lawns was
10:46
that they required a ton of work to keep them looking perfect.
10:50
And the worst part about that work was the more you do,
10:54
the harder it gets.
10:56
The grasses we use for lawns had co-evolved with clover,
10:59
which fixes nitrogen into the ground for the grass to access.
11:02
Friends forever.
11:04
But then we developed a pesticide that's perfect for lawns cuz it only kills
11:07
broadleaf plants,
11:09
not grasses.
11:10
But that does include clover.
11:12
So, in a matter of years,
11:14
lawn care companies went from selling clover supplements to declaring it the enemy,
11:18
easily dealt with by spraying 24D,
11:21
a nice little chemical developed by the military to starve enemy troops into submission.
11:26
So now, instead of getting nitrogen for free,
11:29
you got to buy a nice bottle of nitrogen fertilizer
11:31
and spray it all over your lawn.
11:33
A small price to pay for defeating the evil clover.
11:37
But uh-oh, grass is sometimes a little bit brown in the spring.
11:41
Why not apply even more nitrogen multiple times a year to keep it green
11:44
forever?
11:45
Sure, it needs more water
11:46
and you got to mow it more
11:48
and now it needs more fertilizer,
11:50
but you can buy all that.
11:51
And the rapidly expanding lawn care industry was graciously willing to sell you whatever
11:56
they felt you needed.
11:59
And you can't have a good lawn without mowing it frequently to keep it
12:03
short and neat.
12:04
Shorter grass means weeds can grow more easily.
12:07
And constantly cutting the tops off of grass stresses their biology,
12:10
but you can fix that, too.
12:12
A little herbicide, some fungicide.
12:14
You need a mower, an edger, and a weeder.
12:16
And now some hoses, and some sprinkler systems.
12:18
You need a whole shed full of tools
12:20
and chemicals to keep this baby alive.
12:22
>> You could get the new Scots lawn care system.
12:25
It's an annual weeding and feeding program.
12:27
>> I'm fertilizing my lawn with the Burgess Fluidic Lawn Feeder.
12:31
Just pound job solid spikes of fertilizer into moist ground.
12:34
>> I'm John Manley, president of So Green.
12:36
My quality WinterPro full fertilizer has no crushed rock filler.
12:41
>> And my god, did it work.
12:43
In 1946, there were just a 100,000 mowers sold in the US.
12:47
But by 1959, Americans were buying 4.2 million lawnmowers every year.
12:53
The lawn care industry numbers are a little hard to pin down,
12:56
but one expert puts the home
12:58
and garden sales at $4.5 billion in 1960 alone.
13:03
By the early8s, Americans were using more synthetic fertilizer on just their lawns than
13:08
all of India was using on all of its food crops.
13:12
And again, there's nothing inherently wrong with grass.
13:15
A lawn is a nice place to have a picnic.
13:18
And if you're a kid trying to kick a soccer ball,
13:20
it's really helpful if there aren't a ton of rocks
13:22
and tomato plants in the way.
13:24
The problem is America looked at lawns
13:27
and decided every house needed to have
13:29
as much pure green weedless lawn
13:31
as possible.
13:32
We were successfully lawnraed.
13:35
No lawn care cost too great, no task too difficult.
13:39
We love lawn.
13:40
We love you lawn.
13:41
Unfortunately, lawns did not love us back
13:44
because it turns out a lot of this stuff is really,
13:48
really bad for us.
13:49
>> I think there is no doubt
13:50
that the use of pesticides has resulted in extensive damage to wildlife wherever we
13:56
have conducted careful studies.
13:58
We have had losses that averaged 80% or more.
14:01
During the past years,
14:02
do you think that the public was sufficiently praised of the potential hazards of
14:07
pesticides?
14:08
>> The answer I could say very quickly is no.
14:10
In a twist no one saw coming,
14:13
all these amazing new murder chemicals we developed were having some unintended health consequences.
14:18
In the 40s and 50s,
14:20
Americans were blanketing their lives in a new pesticide called DDT
14:24
that was touted as an atomic bomb for pests.
14:33
You can even use this hose attachment and get it right in the water.
14:37
And while you're at it,
14:38
why not cover your kids' walls with DDT children's wallpaper?
14:41
But then Rachel Carson published Silent Spring,
14:44
and everyone got nervous
14:45
that blasting DDT all over your couch might be pretty bad for you
14:49
and the environment.
14:50
Whoopsies.
14:51
But then we successfully ban DDT.
14:54
So that should pretty much be that.
14:59
Oh no.
15:05
Chemical Workers Union became suspicious of the herbicide
15:08
or Isiselin when workers in upstate New York began connecting birth defects.
15:13
>> Inside the home, chlorine in a readytouse oil solution can be used.
15:23
>> And then there's glyphosate, aka Roundup.
15:27
>> Weeds, no problem.
15:29
A shot of Roundup kills weeds and grasses.
15:33
I'm a loving husband and a real good dad,
15:35
but weeds just make me rattlesnake mad.
15:38
Now Roundup has a new sharpshoot wand.
15:40
I'm sending them weeds to the great beyond.
15:42
>> Nothing kills weeds better.
15:44
>> Buy Roundup now and you can save up to $120 on American Airlines tickets.
15:49
>> Yeah, this one is still widely available all over the US,
15:52
and I bet you see places where it's sprayed pretty much every day.
15:55
It is the most heavily applied herbicide in history.
15:58
But somehow this former groundskeeper got cancer, then sued the makers of Roundup,
16:03
a little mom and pop shop called Monsanto,
16:06
who were forced to pay him $289 million in damages.
16:10
There's also an incredible interview clip that I first saw in an H.
16:13
Bomber guy video featuring an industry shill,
16:16
claiming that Roundup is completely safe for humans to drink.
16:19
You can drink a whole quart of it and it won't hurt you.
16:22
>> You want to drink some?
16:23
We have some here.
16:24
>> I'd be happy to, actually, but not not really.
16:27
But >> not really.
16:28
I know it wouldn't hurt me.
16:29
>> I mean, if if if you say so.
16:30
Okay, I have some glass.
16:31
>> No, no, I'm not stupid.
16:32
>> Oh, okay.
16:33
So, you you you >> No, but I know dangerous.
16:35
I know.
16:36
No, people try to commit suicide with it and fail fairly regularly.
16:39
>> Tell the truth.
16:40
>> It's not dangerous to humans.
16:42
No, it's not.
16:42
>> So, you ready to drink one glass of >> I'm not an idiot.
16:46
Ah, yes.
16:46
The rare double reverse.
16:48
Very difficult to pull off,
16:50
but a highly effective way to avoid drinking
16:52
that Roundup you said you would drink with no one being the wiser.
16:56
And then there's the fertilizer that we're using way too much of.
17:00
Synthetic fertilizers have a tendency to slleoose off
17:03
and into our groundwater where they join a gang of other pesticides,
17:06
herbicides, and fungicides.
17:08
This can lead to algo blooms, dead zones.
17:12
It can suffocate entire schools of fish, contaminate drinking water,
17:15
contribute to methoglobanmia in infants, and a whole gaggle of negative health implications.
17:21
And you remember all those lawnmowers we're selling?
17:24
Well, lawnmowers and other gardening equipment have small
17:26
but mighty engines that burn gasoline at an incredible rate
17:30
and vent uncombusted fuel
17:32
and other emissions straight into the open air.
17:34
The EPA estimates that landscaping equipment generates
17:37
as much nitrous oxide greenhouse gas
17:39
as 30 million cars
17:41
and as much carbon dioxide
17:43
as the entire city of Los Angeles.
17:46
Since lawn equipment isn't regulated as hard as automobiles,
17:50
running a lawn mower for a single hour is roughly equivalent to driving 300
17:54
miles in your brand new pre-owned 2016 Toyota Camry.
18:08
>> This next part freaks me out because I have a fear of bodily injuries,
18:11
so I made co-writer Matt Nelson write it.
18:15
There are tens of thousands of people injured by lawnmowers every year in the
18:21
US.
18:21
Trust me, I can't dwell on this,
18:23
but riding around on a bunch of spinning swords is actually quite dangerous.
18:27
Gesture to the right side of frame.
18:29
This is the safety label they were going to use back in the 70s
18:32
before the lawn care industry pushed back.
18:34
I blurred it out because it makes me sick,
18:36
but you can look it up on your own using these keywords.
18:40
But just like cars, it's not the company's fault it's not safe.
18:44
It's you, you idiot.
18:46
>> Every year in this country, simple human negligence, not faulty machine design,
18:51
not bad luck, simple human negligence causes thousands of incidences of bodily injury.
18:58
And it's a curious fact
18:59
that all these injuries could be avoided through a state of being called operator
19:04
awareness while on or around the machine.
19:07
>> And remember, if we just relaxed a little bit,
19:10
we could probably avoid a lot of this stuff.
19:13
Grass is not naturally green all year round.
19:15
If we just let it be brown sometimes,
19:18
we could save literal billions of gallons of water.
19:21
Celebrity lawn owner Kim Kardashian got busted for blowing past her water aotment by
19:26
232,000 gallons in one month.
19:30
This is the color of their grass
19:31
and this is the color their grass should be.
19:33
If we stopped killing clover,
19:35
we wouldn't have to add a bunch of extra nitrogen.
19:37
We could have more natural lawns at a fraction of the effort
19:40
because this twisted monoculture grass that's hooked on the blacktar heroin of lawn care
19:45
and chemical companies is not a natural lawn.
19:48
My god, if we just stopped vacuuming up the lawn clippings after we mow,
19:52
we could reduce the need for fertilizer by 50%. 50 with a D.
19:58
You ever seen a field like this?
20:01
That's nature.
20:01
No one does anything.
20:03
It's just there.
20:05
But despite all the issues
20:06
that come with making the areas around our houses expensive,
20:10
useless time sucks.
20:12
Lawns completely dominated American culture.
20:15
>> But my lawn, Dale, you don't mess with a man's lawn.
20:18
>> I'd love to check, but I got to run.
20:24
>> Get off my lawn.
20:25
>> Lawns now cover an estimated 40 million acres of the US.
20:29
That's larger than the entire state of Georgia.
20:32
Lawns are the number one most watered crop in America by a country mile.
20:37
We water more acres of grass than the next three crops combined.
20:41
There is so much grass that Massachusetts and New Jersey are 20% lawn.
20:47
My god, the lawns.
20:49
But even if you wanted to get rid of your lawn
20:51
and maybe plant some flowers
20:52
or god forbid vegetables,
20:54
in a lot of places you can't.
20:56
Some people in Commerce City want to make their lawns more drought resistant.
21:00
But an old city landscaping code just won't allow it.
21:02
>> The city of Odessa is taking action against overgrown lawns,
21:05
issuing notices of violation to multiple homes
21:08
that aren't in compliance with the city's code of ordinance.
21:10
>> Tonight, a man in Fort Lupton is preparing to go to court all
21:13
over a fight on whether
21:15
or not the plants he planted in his yard
21:17
or weeds or actually native flowers.
21:19
Kibler was issued this citation for violating city code
21:23
and ordered to cut all of his work down to at most 6 in.
21:27
>> Yeah.
21:28
In almost every municipality in America,
21:30
homeowners are required by law to cut their grass on a regular basis
21:34
and keep the property in a neat
21:36
and clean manner,
21:37
usually setting a maximum lawn height of 6 to 8 in.
21:41
These tend to be called weed laws.
21:43
And let me tell you,
21:44
their Google SEO has gone down considerably in the last few decades.
21:53
Check it out.
21:55
>> But you can find the less popular lawnbased weed laws on the books
21:59
in city after city after city.
22:02
The bottom line is you can be fined by the city
22:04
if your lawn ain't right.
22:06
These laws can prevent people from removing their useless lawn grass in favor of
22:10
planting native grasses and flowers
22:12
that take less water
22:13
and attract things like butterflies
22:15
and other pollinators.
22:16
Another group that's preventing us from rethinking lawns is the dreaded homeowners association.
22:21
>> Albuquerque city councilors mowed down the idea to let homeowners in a neighborhood
22:25
association break their covenants
22:27
and put in more water efficient yards.
22:30
>> That's good news for some homeowners associations
22:32
that require residents to keep some sort of grass in their front yards,
22:35
but bad news for people who favored replacing the green with the less water
22:39
consuming vegetation.
22:40
The ordinance would have been another example of more government interfering in private rights.
22:45
I'm sorry.
22:45
Uh, another example of more government interfering in private rights, buddy.
22:51
That's the HOA being concerned they won't have the private right to force people
22:56
to grow grass in a drought >> in the hottest year in record to
23:01
get grass green.
23:02
I just don't know if that's right.
23:04
>> Okay, a lot of that sounds pretty bad, but folks,
23:07
we've officially made it off of the lawn of problems
23:10
and into the meadow of what we're going to do about it.
23:13
And luckily for us,
23:14
there's already a burgeoning movement that's trying to rethink the practice of everyone in
23:18
America building themselves a little tiny golf course.
23:22
Perhaps the best direction to look is the American West,
23:25
where constant droughts and water restrictions have already forced residents to deal with the
23:30
reality that lawns require a ton of resources,
23:33
and it's actually not that critical to make everybody grow them.
23:37
To their enormous credit,
23:39
some of these states have already reversed course on their horniness for lawns
23:43
and begun placing restrictions on the installation of what they quite accurately call nonfunctional
23:49
turf grass.
23:50
In Arizona, where every city asks,
23:52
"Can people live on the surface of the sun?"
23:54
They've reduced lawn ownership the old-fashioned way.
23:58
Cold hard cash, baby.
23:59
In Phoenix, Arizona, there's a grass removal program
24:02
that pays residents $2 per square foot of grass removed.
24:06
Not to be outdone,
24:07
those Hollywood libs out in droughtprone LA will pay you up to $5 per
24:12
square foot of grass removed.
24:13
The city of Gilbert even extended the offer beyond homeowners.
24:17
Now those bloodthirsty HOAs
24:19
and non-residential owners can take their lawn out back
24:22
and shoot it in the head of Men Style for up to $30,000.
24:27
And once your lawn is all dug up
24:29
and shoved in the trunk of your car,
24:30
you can replace it with a lot of great alternatives.
24:33
One of the most popular is called zeroscaping,
24:36
which I'm hearing now is actually zircaping.
24:39
I've been saying it wrong for years.
24:41
The scape is from landscape and the ziri means dry in Greek,
24:45
which I am Greek Olympics, parthanon, fiser vaccine, zircaping.
24:52
But seriously, zircaping just means replacing your thirsty lawn grass with plants
24:56
and features that don't need you to constantly water them in order to keep
25:00
them alive.
25:01
It uses the radical concept of planting things that naturally grow in your area.
25:06
Remember, unless you live here, Kentucky bluegrass is not native to your area.
25:11
Zercaping can produce some incredible yards full of colorful plants
25:15
and grasses that you don't have to mow
25:17
and even help the local flora
25:19
and fauna.
25:19
It's also not that hard to figure out what to plant.
25:23
If this is your house, you plant this stuff.
25:25
Or maybe you have this house, then you plant this stuff.
25:28
Or you can try something really wild and grow food for yourself or others.
25:33
Everyone knows someone who eats food.
25:35
You can grow zucchini or strawberries or tomatoes.
25:38
I don't know where you live,
25:39
but it's a pretty safe bet
25:40
that if you can grow a non-native monoculture of grass,
25:43
you can also grow something way more productive.
25:46
Now, sometimes you might run a foul of your homeowners association
25:49
or an archaic weed law.
25:51
Or you might just have a nosy neighbor with nothing to do.
25:54
And that sucks.
25:55
I am sorry.
25:56
Obviously, every situation is different, but luckily,
25:59
there are a ton of groups
26:00
that are out there helping people make the switch.
26:03
There are even entire YouTube channels
26:05
that are exclusively tips on how to do this.
26:08
I don't know the half of it.
26:09
I'm not an expert.
26:10
If you want an expert, consider checking out groups like Wild Ones,
26:14
Rewild Your Campus, or Planet Wild.
26:16
Link in the description.
26:18
The social and legal pressure
26:19
that is trying to keep America grassrained is a genuine hurdle. grass has crept
26:24
into our imaginations and it's genuinely difficult for me to envision an American suburb
26:29
that doesn't have its little grass square in front of every house.
26:32
But I also think Americans are capable of realizing
26:35
that the status quo lawn is not necessarily the only way to live our
26:39
lives.
26:40
That isn't to say I think we should rip out every lawn in the
26:43
country or that people who enjoy maintaining their lawns are dumb.
26:46
I'm just saying it's dumb to keep blindly grassing ourselves just cuz that's what
26:51
we've always done.
26:52
I think we should be asking ourselves questions like,
26:55
do we want our families to play on grass that's been treated to with
26:59
chemicals that have dangerous health implications?
27:01
Do we feel comfortable with nitrogen and phosphorus washing into the water supply?
27:06
Does the multi-billion dollar lawn care industry have our best interests at heart,
27:10
or are they maybe in it for the money?
27:12
Do we need to crank through gasoline to make sure our grass stays short
27:16
and hungry?
27:16
Do we have lawns
27:17
because we actually want them
27:19
or because they were already there
27:20
and now we feel like we have to keep maintaining them?
27:24
And if your answer to these questions is
27:25
that you do desperately want a chemical fueled crew cut monoculture,
27:29
then I guess go for it, but don't make your neighbors do it.
27:33
And if you think that maybe trading your health, money,
27:35
and water for some grass that you don't use is a bad idea,
27:39
then it might be time to kill your lawns.
27:43
Ah, from the beginning.
27:45
It's a call back.
27:46
Whoa.
27:47
Location change.
27:48
Okay.
27:49
Here at Climate Town,
27:50
we're a team of four people
27:51
and we make these videos by loading up our backpacks with equipment
27:54
and trekking our asses all over New York City.
27:57
And almost every piece of gear we use,
28:00
from our tripod to our backpack to our bike mounted phone case,
28:03
is from a little brand called Peak Design.
28:06
Their equipment is, and I am not exaggerating, the best in the game.
28:10
And that makes sense
28:11
because it was created by people who are obsessed with design over everything else.
28:15
They guarantee their products with an insane lifetime warranty.
28:19
They treat their employees well and they've never taken on investors,
28:22
which means they'll never have to cut into the quality of their product to
28:25
pay off a bunch of rich dudes.
28:27
But more important than the stuff they make is the they give about the
28:31
planet we're all living on.
28:33
They were the founding members of the climate label,
28:36
which is a certification
28:37
that pushes companies to quantify the impact they're having on the world
28:40
and then start spending actual money to decarbonize their operations
28:44
and supply chains.
28:45
The climate label is a voluntary certification
28:47
that requires businesses to do a thorough accounting of their emissions
28:51
and then devise a meaningful strategy
28:53
that even I agree is no to both reduce
28:56
and offset those emissions.
28:58
And in a time
28:58
when corporations are quietly deleting their net zero pledges from their websites,
29:03
it is incredibly cool
29:04
that Peak Design is putting their money where their mouth is
29:07
and encouraging other companies to do the same.
29:10
And just so you know they mean it,
29:11
Peak Design offered to do something they never do.
29:15
They gave us a promo code for this video.
29:17
So here you go.
29:18
You can use the promo code climate for 20% off the best gear we've
29:23
ever used.
29:24
Peak Design Christmas come early, everyone.
29:27
And if you're wondering about that slogan,
29:29
our producer Daniela got
29:30
so excited when she heard we were getting a discount code
29:32
that she just blurted out Christmas come early everyone.
29:36
And honestly, I've never heard a better slogan.
29:38
So, Peak Design, we use the gear all the time, and we love it.
29:42
Christmas come early, everyone.
29:44
And you made it to the end of the video.
29:46
We're going to have some goofy little bloopers at the end of this part
29:48
because some people on Patreon told me I should do
29:51
that.
29:51
And frankly, I listen to the people on Patreon.
29:54
They're great people.
29:55
Okay, a big thank you to three books
29:58
that were incredibly helpful in making this video.
30:00
I'm talking, of course, about American Green by Ted Steinberg,
30:04
The Lawn by Virginia Scott Jenkins, and Lawn People by Paul Robbins.
30:08
Check them out, link in the description.
30:09
And of course, if you enjoyed this video,
30:11
the best way to support us is on our Patreon page,
30:14
aka the engine that makes this channel go.
30:18
You get behind-the-scenes clips, outtakes, all the bloopers,
30:21
footage from the live show, and of course,
30:23
access to the Climate Town Land line.
30:26
A real phone that sits on my real desk will give you the number.
30:29
You can really call it.
30:31
And most of the time, I will answer.
30:33
People are surprised.
30:35
They're like, "I didn't think you'd answer the phone."
30:38
And I'm like, "Yep, this is a waste of time for both of us.
30:41
What's going on?"
30:42
and we have a little talk
30:44
and then I hang up
30:45
and I don't know
30:46
if they ever call back again
30:47
because they're like that was fine.
30:49
Anyway, it's pretty fun.
30:51
Okay, did I sell it enough?
30:53
All right, we also have a podcast called The Climate Deniers Playbook where my
30:57
childhood friend and Daily Show writer Nicole Conlin
31:00
and I break down climate myths
31:02
and crack wise about other people's mamas,
31:04
executive produced by Ben Bolt.
31:06
We've also got a fantastic newsletter
31:08
that takes you even deeper down the rabbit hole with links
31:11
and jokes.
31:12
It's like a choose your own adventure version of the videos.
31:15
That's from the wickedly talented Matt Nelson and me.
31:18
We've also got shirts made by Eric Henry and TS Designs.
31:22
And oh yeah, we've also got the best hats you'll ever wear in your
31:26
dang life.
31:27
There's no plastic at all.
31:28
They're fantastic.
31:30
Thank you so much for watching.
31:32
Okay.
31:34
>> Okay.
31:34
A guy with a climate science and policy degree and it's a windy day.
31:40
The goal four.
31:43
The goal two.
31:45
Oo.
31:45
I'm getting that shin sweat.
31:47
That famous Williams shin sweat.
31:52
>> This is going to be >> It needs to come in kind of hard,
31:54
but obviously not too hard.
31:56
I'm afraid of leaving the face.
31:57
>> Hi, I'm Raley Williams.
32:03
>> Did you see that?
32:04
Native native pollinator baby.
32:11
>> I have not tried marijuana.
32:14
Uh I have never used it at any time.
32:23
>> Did you hear that pop?
32:25
Goodbye.
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