When I was a kid there were cornfields, wheatfields, clover, and tobacco farms in the country. The Cheasepeke bay had plenty of oysters and crabs.

And the lawns I mowed had crabgrass and dandilions.

Now the small farms are gone. They are replaced by suburbs and shopping malls. And everyone has a perfect lawn thanks to chemlawn.

And the bays no longer have oysters and crabs.

Chemically perfect lawns with dead bays or crabgrass oysters and crabs. We make a bad choice.

This is one conspiracy that can be fixed. Outlaw chimical lawns or loose our environment. I dont mind a little crabgrass, ragweed and dandilions in my yard. I do mind dead bays.

hiya bart,i know exactly where you are coming from.similar things are happening here.Greenbelt land being used for housing and hypermarkets.More local floooding because of paved driveways and patios taking the place of lawns and buliding on former flood plains.Many of these houses may now remain empty or unfinished due to the slump in the housing market,mainly caused by sub-prime mortages and the oil crisis.

I am not against building housing or shopping centers. I am against poor planning that shuffules the water straight into the bays. It needs to soak into the soil first. And it needs to be soil free of chemical lawn treatments. Pretty green lawns meen dead bays.

i live in a rather urban area, you dont see chem lawn around here, i guess that is a plus. but you still have golf courses and such which soak their grass and flood their lakes with pesticide, which usually house families of ducks, luckily for the ducks there is a tiny wildlife reserve across the street, though a fair amount of pesticide probably makes it way to the lake there also...

in the richer areas, its very nice, and suburban looking, but the lakes are manmade, and the canyons are bone dry, no life whatsoever...

when my mom was young, she had so many stories of cool places they would find in the wilderness surrounding their homes, my uncles were actually able to hunt, and this is san diego... now, all those place are gone and replaced with condos, go figure... well, i guess we got computers nowadays, so all that outdoor stuff is pretty obselete lol.

This post has been edited by vyrtigo: Jul 16 2008, 05:47 PM

We cannot destroy all life on the planet. It has recovered from 90% extinctions in the past. The earth will recover. But the poisons we dump can destroy us.

The bisphere of life on the planet creates the conditions condusive to life. Shellfish and reefs capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and binds it in seashells and reefs. Global warming is part of the suns evolution, part the greenhouse gasses we produce, and part the biological damage we do to our environment.

If we do not learn to live with nature then nature will eventually eliminate us. We will cause our own extinction.

This post has been edited by bart5050: Jul 16 2008, 06:02 PM

The real conspiracy is how much chemlawn charges you for their service. I personally maintain one of the nicest lawns on my street, but I do it all o'naturaal. We have a shop that sells all organic pest and lawn control, next to the organic grocery store, it's a great one-stop shop deal for us.

All organic does not mean poison free. Castor beans have ricin, one of the deadliest poisons on the planet. And it is all organic.

The factor that is poisoning the environment is the agents that kill weeds. Basicly crabgrass, dandilion, and clover are broadleaf plants as are most all weeds. Grass is a narrow leaf plant. Organic or chemical the active agent is the one that kills broad leaf plants.

When I was a kid almost every yard had flowering weeds and clover. Now all the lawns are nice green grass. As a barefoot kid I got stung by honybees two or three times a summer. Now I hardley ever see a bee.

Aquatic plants are in trouble and algae blooms threaton our watersheds. Weeds, bees, aquatic plants, crabs, oysters, clams, reefs, amphibians, and who knows what else are in serious trouble as a side effect. Poisons and heavy metals kill because biological organisms have no coping mechanisms. These toxins build in biology because organisms have no method for eliminating them.

We have been eliminating weeds from our lawns by various agents, chemical and organic poisons. This has been going on for decades and we now pay the price. Bees are dissapearing due to a mite infestation. Parasites and disease have always been around. It is the poison accumulating in the environment for decades that have compromised the bees immune systems making them susceptable to mites. Mites are not new, the poisons are.

I know of no study on this. It is just my observation that the ecosystem is in decline and the rate of decline is in direct correlation to how nice our lawns have become. I could be wrong but I think the poisons that target weeds are the cause. Toxins rarely limit themselves to the target. Spread them around indescriminently and there will be consequences.

I would rather see crabgrass and dandilions in yards than an ecosystem in ruins.

Organic or chemical, what do you use to keep your grass beautiful and eliminate the weeds? Any agent that eliminates bio diversity is an agent that changes the environment, all such changes have unforseen consequences.

A few lawns, no big deal. One area, no big deal. It is lawns both residential and in business parks all over the country being treated for decades, thats a very big deal.

This post has been edited by bart5050: Jul 17 2008, 01:09 AM

http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=105

My late father worked at a secret underground lab that has been dismantled now. It is a superfund cleanup site contaminated by heavy metals and radioactive metals. It was run for the DOD by Monsanto corp.

Monsanto is selling us wholesale destruction of the environment for their profit. And we buy it hook line and sinker because we love our green lawns.

And the organic craze is another con job. The worlds most deadly poisons are from organic sources.

We will be drinking this stuff in our water for hundreds of years. They animals won't, they will all be dead.

Add another species to the list. MSN mews story on fireflies dissapearing.

Here is a quote from the article.

Yet another much-loved species imperiled by humankind? The evidence is entirely anecdotal, but there are anecdotes galore.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26471876

Every one can continue to believe the chemicals in farm and lawn products are not responsible for this. I know better because my late father worked at The Mound.

Bees, amphibians, crabs, clams, oysters, and now fireflies.

We are losing species on a wholesale basis and at an alarming rate. We continue to blame it on parasites and disease while we ignore the root cause.

If you use these products then you are part of the problem.

We continue to indiscriminently spread poisons that target destroying bio diversity and refuse to recognize the direct correlation to the bio diversity we are losing in the environment.

It is lunacy.

Continue to believe this is an unfounded claim. You can't bring them back from extinction. Will you have to explain to your grandchildren that nobody had any proof till it was too late? That our generation loved their lawns so much that we leave a legacy of mass extinction for them?

Madness.

OK so chemlawns?? I am not disagreeing, I just don't know anything about it. Lots of claims being made about chemlawns, so, what is the evidence you are working from. Not just, hey look here is all the artificial lawns, but why are they bad, how are they made to make them bad? I agree that most chemicals are pretty dangerous. But can any of you guys be specific. I mean, it is easy for say ciggarattes. You can look anywhere to find a credible study to prove they are bad. What can we read about chemlawns other than... well heresay?

Most of the evidence is ancedotal. The active herbacide in these products is extremly toxic to broad leaf plants. It has been shown to not be toxic to animals by itself. However in combination with other insecticides some biologist have found it to become toxic.

These chemical treatments are a coctail of herbacides and insectacides. The insecticides have been shown to be extremly toxic to crabs and warning labels are on the products about runnoff.

They used to claim they were biodegradable but have removed this claim from the label since it was found the products they degrade to remain in the environment in trace amounts.

Roundup kills everthing in a field. Plants and insects. Then a crop like soybeans is planted that has been bio engineered with a bacteria gene that is resistant to roundup.

These products are made by Monsanto. The creators of PCB's, DDT, Dioxin, and Agent Orange. A number of former Monsanto sites are now superfund cleanup sites. Monsanto has suppressed adverse ecological information in the past. They suppresed what they knew about PCB's for decades. Monsanto ran several secret gov labs for decades and have enjoyed a virtual immunity from regulation from this association.

The Mound in Myamisburg Ohio was a secret underground lab operated by Monsanto for the Gov. It is now a superfund cleanup site. The ground water is contaminated with heavy metals and radioactive elements.

Use common sense. Chimical poisons are used to eliminate all but one crop. Grass and farm crops. All insects and weeds are killed. It is bio diversity that is eliminated and it is bio diversity we are losing in the environment. When poisons have been indescrimenently dispensed in the environment there have always been consequences.

In the thread on bees I posted a link about Monsanto and the poisons they produce.

The problem was first noticed right after chemical lawn products came into heavy use when amphibians started exhibiting birth defects. Chemical poisons are a major source of birth defects.

It is about Money. Destruction of the environment for profit. These toxins are in our water and in our foods. We have not been bio engineered to be resistant and neither has the environment at large. Only a few crops enjoy that privilidge.