The leaf blower and the collapse of civilisation

If there is a God, there are people in my town who are going to hell.

And soon. Because I am going facilitate the journey.

In truth, I feel a little guilty because it not they who are the problem. Not directly. The problem is the internal combustion engine.

Since the bloody thing was invented (by Nickolaus Otto or Rudolf Diesel, take your pick) it has been called the curse of the 20th century. But this isn’t the 20th century. This is the 21st century, and I know what the curse of the 21st century is, because people here own them.

It’s the leaf blower.

Yes, yes! I know there are other tools that use the internal combustion engine. There’s the brush cutter, the chainsaw, the hedge trimmer, the lawn mower, and they all make a din and they’re all a menace at 7am, or even 8am or 9am, on a weekend morning.

But at least the brush cutter destroys weeds, the lawn mower cuts the grass, the hedge trimmer trims hedges and the chainsaw cuts down trees and reduces them to fire-sized chunks.

The leaf blower (and I ask you to think about this very, very carefully) blows leaves.

It blows leaves.

It doesn’t bag them up and take them to the tip; it doesn’t burn them or compost them or dig them into the garden. It blows them. Out the gate and off the footpath and onto the road – where a passing car will blow them back again five minutes later.

What’s more they cost $200, $300, $400 or more.

None of that’s my business, of course.

It doesn’t become my business until they start the bloody things up, and from one end of the street to the other the pathetic, futile, worthless drone of leaf blowers fills the weekend air.

They blow leaves in ever-increasing clouds further and further down the block until they reach the corner in a giant leaf storm the size of a glacial drift, into which cars drive, never to be seen again.

And tomorrow the leaves will be back!

At least when you use a chainsaw to chop wood, it stays chopped.

I want to grab these leaf blower owners by their lapels and scream at them: “But don’t you see? It’s a complete waste of time! Tomorrow there will be more leaves; and the day after that, and the day after that!”

There’s more purpose in being an ant. At least they go hunting for food and protect the colony from enemies and care for the eggs.

There’s even a species called leafcutter ants, who cut up leaves and use them to grow food. But there are no ants in the entire world that blow leaves away from their front door because they’re untidy. And even if they ever did it once or twice, I’m sure they’d work out in ant-seconds that it was a complete waste of time and they’d never do it again.

I never really believed the western world was decadent. The absurdity of women’s fashions, the nonsense of film star idolatry, the blind stupidity of bigotry and the arrogance of religious piety never really made me think we were facing the end of civilisation as we know it. Even various world financial crises couldn’t do that.

But the leaf blower?

I think it’s time to lie down and die.

Especially people who own one.