California moves toward ban on gas lawn mowers and leaf blowers

but you're driving a prius

 

Or even a dirty car.

 

Dirtier or more carbony?

I really do not see how a 125cc Briggs can turn a pint of gas into the same amount of pollutants as a whole coal powered plant…..buuuuut that’s statistics for you.
Speaking of which….
Caly still had an operational coal powered plant in 2020 the last time I looked, and my finely honed Spidey senses are tingling about the roughly 30% of their capacity that’s imported from out of state.

But hey….
I let California be ‘them’.

I use corded appliances when and where they make sense (in town.)
My CFO uses the smallest (30”) riding mower that’s available locally and my policy is to let her be her.
The $1000 we paid for the mower (atypically - I bought that one new) has already been recouped by the savings we realized by NOT paying some gradual student from the WHAM-O Lawn Care Company to butcher our yard with a barely muffled zero-turn mower at 0730.
I use corded because they’re faaaar less expensive than battery powered gear.
Li-ion batteries are, for now IMHO, one reason that people view climate activists with deep skepticism.
With current technology (which WILL improve) it’s just “dirt shifting.”
For now, I’m content to let BEV owners do the transmogrifying of Lithium from being ‘kinda cleaner’ to something approaching real-world “carbon neutral.”

Maybe this time without so much of the smug.

If not….
A 100’ $40 12AWG cord powering a cast-off electrical appliance means that I can be MORE smug than most.

 

One small engine to an entire coal plant is not a like comparison. It would be one gas mower, trimmer, blower, etc. to an electric version. Then it should be the grid the electric appliance is on, not a single plant type.

CO2 emissions comes down to the amount of fuel burned. So a lawn mower isn't going to get between by a car in that regard. The immediately harmful and smog forming pollutants are caused more by how the engine runs than the amount of fuel. Direct comparisons vary from one mower equaling 4 cars to 11 cars.

Mowers are now 4 cycle engines. By their nature, 2 cycle ones will be worse. Looking at the larger picture. Small engines account for around 5% of the air pollution in the US. Then there is all the spilled fuel for those engines; annual estimates are in the millions of gallons.

 

My point exactly.

People are a lot more careful now since gas is almost $3 a gallon.....

 

Are the crews that don't pay for fuel, and are pressured to go fast, as careful?

Forgot the links, but IIRC spilled gasoline for small engines was estimated in the 14 to 17 million gallons a year range. What will being careful do, get it down to 10 million.

 

Absolutely true.

And the actual total figures are often hard to find.......because they often show an embarrassingly small advantage from "all electric".

The resultant environmental contaminants ARE easier to deal with if they are concentrated in just a few locations though.
But the other side of THAT coin is: If ALL of your power needs come from just one source, a failure of that source can cause some HUGE bad consequences.

There are no easy answers.

 

The thing that pisses me off about that is:
The design of the tools and batteries seems to change about every 3 years or so.....under the claim of an "improvement" and the old batteries are not available as new replacements.

Thus they in effect FORCE you to buy new tools when your battery wears out.
Even though the tool itself might have a LOT of life left in it.

 

I thought it was clear from context that this was for on a per-energy-output basis. It would take nearly a half million of those 125cc engines to match the energy output single big coal plant. I wouldn't want my lungs anywhere near that many small engines.

Californians likely have little memory of gas that cheap.



Even here, $3 is cheaper than normal.

 

and just like that, your deflated all of the "green" crap that California tries to tell the rest of the world is right

 

Maybe they should just tighten up the sale of gas in cans? Or is that just crazy talk.

 

Huh?

... must be one of those "in the eyes of the beholder" things.

 

Sooner or later (perhaps in my lifetime), governments will hoard all liquid fuel for military use, and they won't want us little people to waste it when we can get by with other options. There's a lot of work to figure out how commercial airlines will adapt, but might as well wean us off gasoline use now where it's easy to cut.

Never mind that air pollution kills 1 in 8 people...

 

Wow.
That's quite the figure.

Worse than COVID, even.....

 

IIRC, COVID has killed 2.7 million people worldwide ever (more than 1 year), while air pollution kills 10 million people every year.

So, much worse than COVID.. so far.

 

and yet, some don't believe in air pollution, or at least caused by ice's

 

People don't believe anything they hear and they only believe half of what they see - BECAUSE - people are rather selective about what they "see" but NOT very selective about what they SAY....most especially when they cite statistics.

A lot of attention is being paid to Caly this week WRT "transportation bottlenecks" and it's interesting to see the OTHER 'Southwest_Effect' play out in this battle.
FWIW....
I'm a proud native Hoosier, and I've been to our Transportation Secretary's home town a number of times.
I think that FNS is horribly unfair in their treatment of him, given his performance in the area of civil administration and transportation.
If you've ever been to that part of my beloved home state then you will agree with me that his being on a long paternity leave is a GOOD thing when there are transportation bottlenecks in California.



Right now?
They're talking about temporarily trashing CARB and trucking (AND %$#@! Labor Union) regulations just so people can get their Christmas presents and Thanksgiving canberries (berries shaped like the container they came in.)

Gotta love the irony.....

 

read the post I quoted,
I was pointing out that the "green everything" like changing to lithium batteries
will increase the pollution and trash, overall of using current stuff