Commusings: A Great Wind by Jake Laub

Dear Commune Community,

No sooner than I crack my lips to welcome my podcast guest do the neighborhood leaf blowers snarl and rattle. “Out, Out!” I utter with futility. Our local leaf blowing is synchronized to my interview schedule with uncanny precision. If you listen closely to the podcast, you’ll notice a sound bed of revving turbines under the velvety lilt of my voice-overs.

And now, it’s April and my neighborhood sounds like an elementary school rehearsal for Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. A veritable symphony of blowers — the small ones as woodwinds and the robust ones as cellos. If only.

Jake, today’s scribe, and I have commiserated hundreds of times over our shared ire for the pan-polluting pantomime of blowing leaves from one yard to another (and back). He captures our common distaste for this ritual brilliantly in the essay to follow. 

There was once a great April snow in Southern Vermont. One neighbor immediately donned his galoshes and set out on the back-breaking work of shoveling his driveway. The other neighbor stayed in, smoked his pipe, and read a book, watching his neighbor toil with the smile of a Cheshire cat. The next morning, they both awoke to a brilliant 60-degree day. The great snow was now flowing down the creek. 

In matters of snow and leaves, my preferred option is Taoist. Do nothing and leave nothing undone.

In love, include me,
Jeff

P. S. If you’ve read my new book, GOOD STRESS, send me an email at [email protected] with your thoughts. And if you haven’t, buy it now and I’ll throw in all sorts of Commune bonus goodies for you, including courses from Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Zach Bush, and others.

 • • •

A Great Wind

by Jake Laub
 

It’s a Red Flag day in Los Angeles, with low humidity and extremely high winds. I watch as tiny tsunamis of shriveled sycamore leaves slide down the sidewalk. With every fresh gust, more rain down.

And yet, punctually at 8 AM, a leafblower fires up next door. The roar of its two-stroke engine blends with the howl of the wind, and the stench of gasoline permeates our yard.

Almost two years ago, Julia, Maeva, and I had to pack up our yurt at Commune Topanga and move into the San Fernando Valley with Julia’s parents. I can’t say enough good things about live-in grandparent childcare, and I fail to conjure sufficient expletives for this neighborhood’s leafblowers. 

Every house has its scheduled horde of gardeners. Some are once a week. Some, twice a week. I swear, some get daily blowouts, as if to compete with the 10 hair salons around the corner on Ventura Boulevard.  

On our walks, Julia and I will often contemplate a man pursuing a single leaf with a backpack of jet-engine fury across an immaculate lawn until it skips and dances onto the adjacent property. The following day, we will see a different man blow it back.

Today, though, the leaves are winning. A part of me admires the Zen mindset of these Red Flag gardeners as they assiduously perform their duties despite the clear impermanence of the project. They blow leaves into a pile only for the pile to instantly erode.

Once I watched a group of Buddhist monks painstakingly create a mandala of colored sand, only to scatter the artwork into the garden. It’s kind of like that, except much louder and dirtier. 

According to one study, operating a two-stroke gas-powered leaf blower for 30 minutes emits nearly 300 times the non-methane hydrocarbons and 23 times the carbon monoxide as driving a Ford F-150 the same duration. 

Put another way, running a commercial leaf blower for 30 minutes is equivalent to driving a gas-guzzling pickup truck approximately 3,900 miles, the distance from Texas to Alaska. ​

In a similar vein, according to a California Air Resources Board report from 1999, “we calculate that hydrocarbon emissions from one-half hour of leaf blower operation equal about 7,700 miles of driving.” 

Take that in for a moment. 30 minutes = 7,700 miles of driving. And that’s from 1999 — cars have gotten more efficient since then, but 2-stroke gas leafblowers have not.

That’s partly the issue: Gas-powered leaf blowers are so polluting because most use outdated two-stroke engines that burn a mix of oil and gas inefficiently, spewing large amounts of unburned hydrocarbons and other pollutants directly into the air. Unlike modern cars, which are equipped with advanced emissions controls like catalytic converters and fuel injection systems, leaf blowers have virtually no emissions technology. That’s why they smell so strongly. 

Then there’s the noise pollution. Most gas blowers operate at 70 to 90+ decibels at 50 feet, and often over 100 dB at the operator’s ear. For reference, 85 dB is the threshold where hearing damage can occur with prolonged exposure. 

I am currently within 50 feet of four neighbors who each have gardeners come twice a week. Not to mention the constant whine and drone from the neighbor’s neighbors. Really, any house in a quarter-mile radius.

Studies have linked noise pollution to worse cardiovascular health, cognitive performance, and mental health. I can certainly attest to the latter. 

But I don’t blame the gardeners. They are almost exclusively low-paid Latino men who suffer from hearing loss, respiratory issues, headaches, dizziness, and increased cancer risk from long-term VOC and benzene exposure — just so we can enjoy a lush-but-leaf-free lawn in the middle of a desert. 

And here’s the kicker: They are illegal in L.A.

​In the City of Los Angeles, the use of gas-powered leaf blowers is prohibited within 500 feet of residential properties at all times. Theoretically, both the operator and the person who hired them could be fined up to $100. ​

In recognition that no one has done a damn thing about this law, last year Councilmember Nithya Raman introduced a motion to improve enforcement mechanisms and public education. We’ll see how that shakes out long term. 

In the meantime, I did get what I wanted, if not in the way I hoped. 

I dictated the opening paragraphs of this musing at 8 AM on Tuesday, January 7. By 12:30 PM, a dark plume of smoke loomed over the Pacific Palisades. By the next morning, large swaths of Los Angeles had burned to the ground.

In the weeks following, the L.A. Department of Public Health issued a temporary ban on the use of all power air blowers to prevent the dispersion of ash and particulate matter. Suddenly, people cared enough to cancel their gardeners.

For a brief, somber time, the leaf blowers went eerily silent.