Listen to the podcast; join the follow-up teleconference. This podcast topic is “Lawns and Biodiversity.”
Follow up Teleconference: The waste growing lawns is enormous, but we seldom see it. Seeing something as common as lawn care from a different view illustrates how to use Compression Thinking guidelines. Think of your lawn as an ecology, not as a cosmetic arrangement to either impress others, or to conform to a local upkeep standard.
The teleconference will open with a light review of an exchange between St. Francis and God about lawns, a spoof about 20 years old; origin unknown. Brief histories of lawns and lawn care are at The Lawn Institute. That site also illustrates the conflict between growing turf grass for human use and preserving an ecology to increase local biodiversity.
Those close to the subject regard loss of biodiversity as seriously as climate change, but it garners much less media attention. A Guardian article briefly describes the consternation of naturalists like E.O. Wilson. For years they have called for mankind to set aside 15-50% of all land area as nature preserves to prevent catastrophic loss of global biodiversity. Biologists consider the situation dire, but the public hears only about losses of marker species like honeybees and monarch butterflies that most of us see occasionally. But if these marker species are disappearing, what’s happening to all the others? We do not see them unless we tune our attention to see them. It’s not always what we see, but what we don’t see that should alarm.
What does this have to do with lawns? All biodiversity is local. It starts in your own yard. Dealing with it is something that most of us can do ourselves if we work up the awareness and the determination to do it.
- 8 PM Eastern, 2/18/2020
Click here to return to the Compression Thinking Series of 12 podcasts and 12 teleconferences >