At the risk of becoming an anti-leaf blower blog, I wanted to follow up on one of Emily Green’s points in the podcast I posted yesterday. Leaf blowers do indeed have lobbyists who work out of a swanky office near Washington D.C.: the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI).
If your city tries to enact a ban on leaf blowers the OPEI will orchestrate a campaign to stop the measure. I’m not against outdoor tools (chainsaws, in the right hands, are very useful). But landscapes that depend on and are shaped by machines need to go. And let’s sweep away the leaf blower lobbyists while we’re at it.
This reminds me of the work of an artist friend of mine, Steve Rowell, who has a project called Parallelograms that maps the physical landscape and architecture of lobbying that surrounds this nation’s capitol. So Steve, you can add the OPEI offices to your list . . .
Wow! I’m flabbergasted. The leaf blower folk have a lobby group. The daily news gets worse and worse.
This old world really needs a reboot.
Marieann
In the rest of the country that is not LA, leaf blowers actually help a great deal. I have 10-12 mature oaks around my home and Fall creates an amazing amount of leaves. Left uncleaned, they would smother my lawn and, more importantly, create fire risks around the home.
Cleaning up this amount of leaves without the aid of a blower is an immense challenge.
Seasonal usage, though.
I used a gas powered leaf blower for the first time today. We harvested honey and blew the bees away from out cache. 😉
Other than that I have no use for them.
I’ve been enjoying the leaf blower posts. My own post about the topic has been one of the enduring hits on my blog. Replacing leaf blowers with rakes would be a boon to public and environmental health, not to mention neighborliness. http://mojourner.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-all-purpose-policy.html
A most excellent rant!