elodieunderglass:underthehedge: elodieunderglass: elodieunderglass: NO BUT THESE ARE THE THINGS I WA

elodieunderglass:underthehedge: elodieunderglass: elodieunderglass: NO BUT THESE ARE THE THINGS I WAS TALKING ABOUT HERE: https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/185703978243/okay-so-we-all-agree-lawns-suck-are-outdated-and See how the slyly worded, rather weaselly marketing claim for CityTrees claiming that these panels of moss contain “The cleaning power of 275 trees” got changed, in people’s minds, to “each panel of moss ABSORBS AS MUCH CARBON DIOXIDE as 275 trees”, a completely ridiculous and impossible claim?? And then see how people immediately decided that moss is therefore somehow more “eco” than trees and that “moss lawns” will magically solve global warming? See how everyone did that, by themselves? The important facts, like ‘when plants absorb carbon dioxide, they release the oxygen and use the carbon for their own construction; therefore, plants only absorb as much carbon as they physically need to grow’ have been utterly discarded in the rush to believe something more viral and exciting.One sly bit of marketing that the public has been widely encouraged to misinterpret, verbally repeated from a random person to a random Guardian blogger at a garden show, who blogged about it as if it was a fact, has now gotten so scrambled that people on tumblr honestly believe that 12 square meters of moss absorbs as much carbon dioxide as 275 trees. These screencaps show the actual claims about the CityTrees, which are that the moss, having a lot of surface area for its mass, can filter the particles in air pollutants more efficiently than equivalent-sized plants that are smoother.You will see the effects of this for years. Years from now, people will insist that moss has the ability to simply erase carbon molecules from the universe. And you’ll know differently, but because it won’t match what people prefer to believe, nobody will listen to you. It’s just!!! I’m still so annoyed about this!Carbon. The only element on the periodic table whose atoms exhibit quantum behavior depending on local belief levels. Because, you see, carbon atoms simply pop out of existence whenever they’re inconvenient to the narrative. IS THIS WHERE THAT FUCKING FIGURE COMES FROM?I always assumed someone had misunderstood something about the carbon stored in several metres of peat or something! It literally is. Most of the sources talking about moss lawns circle back to the James Wong Guardian article, which came directly from talking to a CityTrees marketing guy at a plant show. He posted the article and most people have propagated from that source since. (the other articles circle back to Japanese botanical gardens, which are enchanting and important pieces of heritage/plantcraft, but rather a startling thing to suggest that people take up wholesale; a bit like saying that everyone in the world should stop using commercial airlines to save the planet, and should replace all long-haul travel by flying individually owned motorised hang-gliders. Like, okay, I guess that would solve the immediate commercial flight thing, but what about the bonkers new problems this idea would cause? What are you supposed to do if you’re travelling with children, luggage, pets? What about weather? What about the fact that the planet is, very much, largely oceanic. Wait, hang-gliding is a SPECIALISED SKILL and a HOBBY, most people won’t even have the skill to do it safely, or the time to take on this huge new activity! What would be the benefit of doing this instead?? Do we even have evidence that ordinary people can do this in their lives? Can we interview someone who does it for their daily commute, maybe? Do you have pictures? These pictures are stolen from a highly regarded botanical garden in Japan. This is a stock image photo of a temperate rainforest in the USA. Who is doing this?)(I would also like to challenge bloggers to question their relationship with Asian material culture: when discussing Japanese gardens, why is it important to repeat the adjectives of “cool, serene, peaceful” and their existence as “more enlightened” than “Western” analogues, and what is being extracted and sold here? Which aspects of the cultural meaning of moss cultivation should the average reader absorb and replicate? Is the enlightenment something that travels with having the moss, or…? Why, when encouraging people to reject the (false) connection of American grass lawns to French monarchy, is it important that Americans replace this connection with Japanese sites of heritage? Why are people instructed to participate in ritual consumption of plants and cultures, rather than focusing on their actual household needs and what their actual land can readily give them? Why are indigenous practices never present in North American gardening advice? Why is North American gardening advice presented in a tone of instructing the entire world to follow? Why do biomes get so flattened in these discussions?) And nobody will ever believe you. -- source link

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