Leaf blowers need to be eradicated from the face of the earth. Feat Cate Blanchett
Summary
Cate Blanchett has a vendetta against leaf blowers, and she's got the stats to back it up. The Oscar-winning actress tells Kareem that 30 minutes on a leaf blower produces more pollution than driving a pickup from Texas to Alaska. She witnessed peak absurdity in Miami: a guy on the beach boardwalk blowing a single leaf, probably chased from five blocks away. The conversation spirals through Washington D.C.'s leaf blower concentration, the rise in cardiac problems from people skipping physical labor, and why everything blows instead of sucks. Blanchett's solution? Pay your kids three bucks an hour to rake. Her kids are 24 now, though, so they're not taking that deal.
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Full Transcript
So what's your take? Leaf blowers need to be eradicated from the face of the Earth? 100% agree. I was in Miami the other day. Yes, I literally saw a guy blowing one leaf. Maybe he was trying to blow the sand blowing. But where was he blowing it? It was on the beach on the boardwalk. He was blowing one, one leaf. So he'd been blowing that leaf probably from five blocks away. It had finally got onto the beach and his employer had said, "If you don't get rid of that leaf, you're done." But the stupidity—this is the thing—it's, it's a metaphor for what's wrong with us as a species. Is we blow from one side of our lawn to the other side, and then the wind is just going to blow it back?
Is this a problem in, like, Australia? It actually, my rage went through the roof in Washington, where I think there's the highest concentration of leaf blowers. In California, yeah, yeah, and they banned them. I, they did a study back in, I don't know, 2010 or something, that 30 minutes on a leaf blower—this is going to make you really sick—has more pollution than driving a pickup from Texas to Alaska. 30 minutes. It's, it's really bad. So they've banned them in Washington.
Whatever happened to RVs? No, see, this is the thing. Not only are leaf blowers ugly and their noise pollution, then your neighbors hate you because in the end, all you're doing is blowing the leaves onto your neighbor's lawn. So it's really bad for, for neighbor relations. They're really bad for your health, not only your ears, I know, but the rise of cardiac problems has gone through the roof because people are not doing the physical exercise. Make your kids do it is really a good point. It's true. I'll pay my kids two bucks an hour—okay, three an hour—to rake the leaves and make sure their hearts are in good condition.
Well, they're now 24, so they don't listen to me. No, no, you, they deserve $3 an hour. Ex, they're 25 years old. They're going to work for $3 an hour?
Why do they blow instead of suck, like a vacuum cleaner? Yes. Why are we obsessed with blowing? I know, hair dryers, everything's blowing, nothing's sucking.
I know. You know, well, humans suck.