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I will have to say that the research on this is quite outdated, with newer research seemingly coming from industry groups associated with the golf sector and giving rise to conflicts of interest.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I will have to say that the research on this is quite outdated, with newer research seemingly coming from industry groups associated with the golf sector and giving rise to conflicts of interest.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