Things That Shouldn't Exist
In honor of Earth Day
Warning: curse words ahead.
It’s 2025. Men (and now women, including a pop star!) have ventured into space. Since the turn of the millennium climate change has accelerated, but the people in power seem focused on developing Artificial Intelligence and designing space ships so they can (perhaps) live on Mars, or some other planet.
According to this Earth Day Fact Sheet, we’re in the midst of a mass extinction which is, like climate change, accelerated (created??) by human activity. Animal populations have declined nearly 75% in the past 50 years– because of humans. Not to mention the humans who are adversely affected by other, wealthier humans. A while ago I wrote about how the world’s wealthiest people are essentially killing the rest of us because they just can’t quit fossil fuels. Or maybe they don’t want sustainability, because that would threaten their wealth and power? Read what I wrote here:
For Earth Day, I’m offering a simple list of things that shouldn’t exist. Let’s initiate a different kind of mass extinction, eh??
Cruise Ships Shouldn’t Exist.
Climate change is real, and cruise ships are absolutely terrible for the environment, so why the fuck do they still exist? Is it the pool slides? The buffets? The illusion of traveling the world when you’re actually just collecting souvenirs?
Cruises have always baffled me, but I tried not to judge. Now I judge, because these ships are so fucking gigantic that they can use over 80,000 gallons of fuel in one day. That’s more fuel than a Cadillac Escalade driver could consume in basically 80 years? Idk, it’s hard to calculate. So basically if everyone on the cruise ship owned an Escalade and drove it for 50 years, they still wouldn’t use as much fuel as the cruise ship.
That’s bonkers.
The ships also use a gross-ass fuel called bunker fuel, which produces a sooty exhaust not dissimilar from wildfire smoke. When it rains, the particulate matter pollutes the ocean.1
Some environmentalists argue that cruise ships could simply switch over to “sustainable” energy, but where’s all the battery material going to come from? Mining. Probably child labor. So…maybe we just cancel cruise ships?
Lawns Shouldn’t Exist.
This has been my “I’ll die on this hill” argument for nearly my entire adult life. Lawns. Why the fuck do they exist?
Before you start in with “but what about (things that is not technically a lawn)?” I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about grass lawns composed of one or two plant species. Lawns that need to be mowed, watered, and sprayed with pesticide. Lawns that need weed whacking and sometimes come in rolled-up lengths of grass that get sewn into the earth like weird, high-maintenance pelts.
Why the fuck do we have lawns? You know that chorus of lawnmowers you hear every day in the suburbs? That’s a chorus of homeowners who absolutely refuse to acknowledge their impact on the environment. Or maybe they’re simply abiding by the rules of the local HOA. Either way, the outcome is decidedly negative.
Lawns reduce local biodiversity, create food deserts for pollinating insects (and therefore insect-eating mammals and invertebretes), and reduce the presence of important shade-giving plants (like…trees and shrubs). According to an NPR report, lawn maintenance consumes around 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline each year. Because most lawn grasses aren’t adapted to the local environment, they often require pesticides, which pollutes local waterways, harming species great and small (including humans!).
I’ll just throw this in here: Golf courses. Make them different. Make golfing like a scavenger hunt through the wilds of your local landscapes. Lots of sand traps. Bogs. Wetlands. Golf should be a full contact sport. Ban lawns on golf courses!
There are so many other options, y’all. Many cities and towns have initiatives for rewilding your landscapes. Here in Tallahassee there’s a wildflower tour focused on people’s yards. Liesel Hamilton wrote about rewilding her yard. So did Jeff Vandermeer.
You can also reduce the negative impact of your lawn by mowing less and creating little leaf-pile homes for creatures to keep warm through the winter.
Private Jets Shouldn’t Exist.
I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain this one. Listen– we are literally killing our planet and ourselves. From Oxfam:
“It’s difficult to believe, but it would take the average UK citizen almost 11 years to emit as much carbon as a single long range private jet emits in a round trip from London to New York.”
You would think that private jet usage would decline as the impacts of climate change accelerate, but it’s actually the opposite. It’s difficult to calculate worldwide private jet usage, but very safe to say that there are over 2 million flights each year between the U.S. and U.K. numbers exclusively, with increasing numbers of short flights. In 2023 Greenpeace released a study proving that European private jet travel had more than doubled between 2022 and 2023, with short-haul flights becoming more popular. These flights are especially harmful because fuel is consumed at the highest rates for takeoff and landing, so a short-haul flight can be almost as bad a a longer one.
Despite there being a speed train between Paris and London, which takes about two hours, private jet flights between the two cities increased. Greenpeace has recently called for a ban on short-haul private jet flights.
At the very least, private jet users should be adequately taxed for their increased carbon footprint, with the proceeds going to improving the lives of everyone they impact and/or increasing local sustainable travel infrastructure.
Super Yachts Shouldn’t Exist.
Listen, I was gonna say all yachts, but I’m being lenient. See: Cruise ships. It’s the same thing, and not really on a smaller scale, because rich people LOVE super yachts. Rather, they love status symbols, and super yachts are one of the brightest and most beckoning of status symbols. From
:“Superyachts — the Super Rich’s single-most polluting asset — saw a 77% surge in sales in 2021. The Superyacht Directory is the world’s largest database of private luxury yachts, with over 12,000 megayachts listed. A few decades ago that number was just one-third of today’s totals.”2
I’ve never been on a super yacht. The closest I’ve gotten was that one time I spent Thanksgiving on a houseboat at Lake Powell. Ironically it was there that I realized how many people actually loved cruises!
Some other things I think shouldn’t exist:
Cars and car infrastructure. I currently live in Florida, where everyone drives. I moved here without a car, hoping I could manage with public transportation. Nope. It’s really, really difficult to live here without a car, and walking sucks, even when there are sidewalks. Oh! And there’s no smog testing! Like, at all! Loud, noxious cars and trucks abound.
The United States continues to deprioritize trains and public transportation. Why? Because so many of the politicians have invested in car companies! (Idk if that’s really why, you tell me?).
I didn’t have a car for the entire time I lived in Europe. Even when I lived in a tiny village of less than 10k people I could get around by train. Was it easy? Not really. But the scenery was nice.
I lived for many years without a car and commuted only by bike. This was fun. I was in excellent shape! When I try to ride a bike somewhere in Tallahassee I fear for my life.
While biking isn’t feasible for everyone, public transportation can be supportive for folks with disabilities as long as it’s done right.
Listen, I know this isn’t totally realistic. But we need to be making 3000% more progress with public transportation. Remember that 2 hour train from London to France? It goes underwater. Tallahassee doesn’t even have an Amtrack station.
Electric cars are great, but making batteries requires extractive mining, and when (not if) the batteries catch fire they’re super dangerous for firefighters.
Leaf blowers. As someone with sensory processing issues, my hatred for leaf blowers has no origin story. Maybe it came from previous lives. The smell. The dust and dirt. The leaves. The NOISE. The leaf blowers come to my apartment complex once a week; a whole crew. Together they stalk the parking lot, blowing the leaves and dust and dirt into piles. Idk where it goes. I’ve never though to look.
There’s more, but I leaf (haha) it at that.
Is there anything you think shouldn’t exist (or should transform from its current form of existence? Tell me in the comments.
And Happy Earth Day (but every day in Earth Day…or it should be!)
https://www.popsci.com/environment/why-cruise-ships-are-bad-for-the-environment/
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/19/superyachts-for-the-super-rich-cause-a-whole-lot-of-environmental-damage/