Is It Immoral to Mow the Lawn?

[Jamie in Chile]

I did a search online for the ethics of gardening but all I found was not to use too many plastic pots, keep the soil in good condition, and be organic. I think what I want to discuss here is too radical for most people today, but I think ethical vegans may be able to relate and give an opinion. It perhaps comes under the category of "beyond veganism". Once we've accepted the basics ethics of veganism, what are the next steps? I’ve been mulling on it for while so here are my thoughts so far.

Firstly, I think plants, although not sentient may have some spiritual or other value. Seeing someone burning down a redwood tree just for a laugh evokes a negative feeling that is different to seeing someone smashing up a rock just for the sake of it. But is that because the tree is alive, or because of the grand scale, or is it only about the beauty? What offends you more, someone vandalizing and killing a small ugly tree, or someone vandalizing and destroying a large, beautiful sculpture?

But, leaving that question aside, killing plants means taking away habitats for bees, insects and birds. If we accept some rights and sentience for simple animals like chickens, does it not follow that even bees and insects have some value, even though it might be less? A lawn left to run wild leads to flowers which leads to bees, and has more insects, and more birds. A cut lawn means habitat loss, which means loss of life. When I cut the lawn, I sometimes see insects on the weeds as I rip them up, and things scurrying to avoid the blade.

We talk about how we need to protect the bees but we don’t make the connection when it comes to cutting the grass.

If animals themselves have any fundamental value, rather than nature being just something for humans to enjoy, does it not follow that cutting your lawn is immoral just as destroying a national park or clear cutting a rainforest is, just on a much smaller scale.

Of course, gardening is not complete destruction – the lawn grows again. But that’s not the point. The act of regularly cutting the lawn means that less insects, bees and birds will live.

So cutting the lawn means that you value the lives of all those creatures less than you value the sight of a neater looking garden. I could make the analogy with the vegan argument that it is not fair to eat meat because the animal gets a lifetime of suffering and then dies, just for a slightly nicer tasting burger.

So, it is probably more moral to not now the lawn or weed.

A recently cut lawn is neater and looks attractive. And in another way, a wild lawn is more beautiful.

And yet, I continue to mow the lawn. Because my wife and my landlord (I rent) and maybe neighbours wouldn’t agree and I don’t have the right to force my opinions on others and I’m still not too sure of my opinions.

Another problem is that if you don’t do any garden maintenance, at least where I live, things get pretty wild pretty fast. I am talking from bare earth to four or five foot high plants in a couple of months. Really. When I haven’t done any gardening for a few months, the garden can be hard to even walk across.

Another argument is that a wild garden will eventually lead to mice and spiders in the house. I think this is possibly wrong and also probably an unfair speciesist argument that suggest we value our own lives too highly compared to other species.

I think in the future one day I might prefer to live in a flat, in a house with no garden, or in a garden that I can leave to go partially wild (e.g. if I own the house this time), at least as much as is practically feasible. But, I'm not sure yet.

Is it morally consistent to refuse to eat a product because it contains a trace of honey, and then go out and mow the lawn, killing many bee-attracting flowers in the process? I am not sure.

Please let me know what you think.

[brimstoneSalad]

Plants only have instrumental value, but I've argued that having lawns itself is bad; we should use that space to grow food. Lawns are a waste of resources.
I don't regard insect habitats as particularly meaningful, and wild animal suffering being what it is, most habitat itself may be a wash.

Do you water your lawn?
Can you collect the clippings to juice, then grow mushrooms on the pulp?

[DarlBundren]

So cutting the lawn means that you value the lives of all those creatures less than you value the sight of a neater looking garden.

Unfortunately, the same could be said about having a house, driving your car and even washing yourself, if you believe bacteria to have some intrinsic value. As I see it, it's a matter of sentience, which we all agree is not black and white, and it's a cost/benefit analysis. For example, driving your car to work is bad for the environment and is bad for some flies, but if you didn't use your car you would not be able to have a job. That, in turn, would result in your not being able, for example, to give money to a top-ranked charity.

This, of course, doesn't mean that if you can ride your bike to work you shouldn't, you should, but only if it's worth it.

Another argument is that a wild garden will eventually lead to mice and spiders in the house. I think this is possibly wrong and also probably an unfair speciesist argument that suggest we value our own lives too highly compared to other species.

I don't think that it's a speciesist argument. I don't want mice and spiders in my house as I don't want other potentially dangerous beings (humans and non-humans alike) in it.

I think in the future one day I might prefer to live in a flat, in a house with no garden, or in a garden that I can leave to go partially wild (e.g. if I own the house this time), at least as much as is practically feasible.

That would be ideal.

Is it morally consistent to refuse to eat a product because it contains a trace of honey, and then go out and mow the lawn, killing many bee-attracting flowers in the process? I am not sure.

Honey is one of the last things we should be concerned about. The strongest argument against honey, in my view, is that it's not particularly healthy. Given that it's mostly empty calories we can simply avoid to eat it and spare that little amount of suffering.

[Jebus]

I've argued that having lawns itself is bad;

but where would my doggies play?

[Jamie in Chile]

Plants only have instrumental value, but I've argued that having lawns itself is bad; we should use that space to grow food. Lawns are a waste of resources.
I don't regard insect habitats as particularly meaningful, and wild animal suffering being what it is, most habitat itself may be a wash.

Do you water your lawn?
Can you collect the clippings to juice, then grow mushrooms on the pulp?

Yes, I water it. We have a sprinker system. If we did not water it, it would likely die, at least seasonally.
No, I don't collect clippings.
We did have some wild mushrooms grow in our previous garden.

[Jamie in Chile]

In the case of driving a car you might indirectly hurt someone, via global waming or crushing a fly, but it is very indirect and accidental. Whereas mowing the lawn is clear, direct and destructive habitat removal.

In the case of washing the body you could argue that bacteria are not really sentient and not worthy of any consideration in the way an insect is (debatable and counter argument: the sheer number of bacteria), and that you could argue that in practice it's difficult to morally consider tiny creatures you can't even see and finally if they are living off your own body they are going to have to take their chances. If you swat and kill a fly because it landed on your body, that's perhaps a little bit bad. If you swat and kill a fly elsewhere in your house, that seems worse. If you go around your garden killing insects, that seems a bit worse still. If you go out into the forest to do it, that feels a bit worse. As you go from your body to your house to your garden to the forest I would say your moral rights decline and the moral rights of the other creatures to inhabit such places might increase. However this may be unfair from the point of view of little creatures that don't have any conception of the differences.

Equating cutting the lawn with owning a house may be a better counter, since some ground may have been razed to built the house causing more habitat loss. This might be an argument for either living in a smaller house or a tower block at least. Not living in a house doesn't seem very practical! That would be an extreme compromise to morality compared to a messy lawn.

If you argue against letting your garden go wild because you are worried about a mouse in your house then what you are saying is that it's worthwhile a habitat destruction that will deprive hundreds of creatures of life just so you don't have to worry about a very small risk of fright of seeing a mouse or very low disease risk. If you automatically put your own human concerns first without weighing up what it means to the animals at all, that's what I see as a speciesist attitude. However, I can see that this is debatable.

As I read through these responses I've made they seem abstract philosophical points, debatable to draw practical moral conclusions from. Of course, the meat eater who comes along and, in order to defend their actions, muddies the waters of debate by cobbling together some arguments about grass-fed beef, vitamin B12 and the fact that animals wouldn't exist otherwise is also able to do the same to the meat eater vs vegan debate, even though the truth of the debate is probably more on the vegan side.

And whatever the truth about driving and washing I'm not sure whether that really confronts the basic question about the morality of clearing away habitats, it is perhaps more of a deflection, like a meat eater who says well what about pesticides from growing plants.

The fact that there is something else that I could also be doing morally that might even be more important, or the fact that my questioning cutting the lawn while probably doing something worse in my life I haven't even considered, which might make me a hypocrit...none of that refutes the fact that it is perhaps morally better for me not to cut the lawn, and so none of that is really a defence of my cutting of the lawn.

[brimstoneSalad]

I've argued that having lawns itself is bad;

but where would my doggies play?

Hide and seek between the raised garden beds in the walkways, or under the fruit trees running around on the non-grass ground cover?

[brimstoneSalad]

In the case of driving a car you might indirectly hurt someone, via global waming or crushing a fly, but it is very indirect and accidental. Whereas mowing the lawn is clear, direct and destructive habitat removal.
[..]
The fact that there is something else that I could also be doing morally that might even be more important, or the fact that my questioning cutting the lawn while probably doing something worse in my life I haven't even considered, which might make me a hypocrit...none of that refutes the fact that it is perhaps morally better for me not to cut the lawn, and so none of that is really a defence of my cutting of the lawn.

Based on what you said before, it doesn't sound like you have very much of a choice.

Is there any leeway in what you can do with the lawn?
Can you plant another kind of grass which needs less input?
Can you plant a small (and attractive) garden?

It's not your house, but if you show your landlord a plan, he or she may agree to it.

[DarlBundren]

In the case of driving a car you might indirectly hurt someone, via global waming or crushing a fly, but it is very indirect and accidental. Whereas mowing the lawn is clear, direct and destructive habitat removal.

You can be reasonably sure that if you drive your car you are going to pollute the environment, though. You just know it. Maybe you don't know the extent of the damage, but the same can be said about the bugs in your lawn.

If you swat and kill a fly because it landed on your body, that's perhaps a little bit bad. If you swat and kill a fly elsewhere in your house, that seems worse.

What I was trying to say is 1) many bugs are barely sentient 2) the harm you inflict has a lot to do with whether you can avoid to do it or not, as you yourself pointed out. Maybe you can choose not to mow the lawn, if you don't think the consequences are bad enough. I have never said you should.

If you automatically put your own human concerns first without weighing up what it means to the animals at all, that's what I see as a speciesist attitude.

The point I was trying to make is that you should evaluate the consequences. Both the bad ones and the good ones. Personally, I don't consider leaving small children in a house infested by rats to be a negligible cause of concern, if that is the situation that we are dealing with. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they are non-human animals. That's why I don't agree that it's a speciesist attitude.
There may be other solutions other than mowing your lawn, though. I am not arguing against letting your garden go wild, I am just asking the question “What if you do it? What If you don't?”

like a meat eater who says well what about pesticides from growing plants.

The question is: Do we have other, more animal-friendly options? If the answer is yes, then we should implement them, if the answer is no, we can just do our best with what we have. Modern pesticides kill fewer animals, are safer for humans and give us better crops.

The fact that there is something else that I could also be doing morally that might even be more important, or the fact that my questioning cutting the lawn while probably doing something worse in my life I haven't even considered, which might make me a hypocrit...none of that refutes the fact that it is perhaps morally better for me not to cut the lawn, and so none of that is really a defence of my cutting of the lawn.

If there were no streets you would crush a bug at every step. As depressing as it sounds, there's no such a thing as life without bloodshed. As far as I am concerned, you can either accept it and try your best to lower your footprint or you can choose a selfish, destructive life and (if you are lucky enough) avoid dealing with the consequences.

[Jamie in Chile]

Some good points there.

We are not talking about a house infested with rats though, I am talking about whether you would destroy a large area of habitat to avoid the possibility that ONE rat MIGHT enter the house and MIGHT (but unlikely) cause a child to develop a disease. Once rats have started entering houses (rather than purely as a possibility) more than very occassionally, and even been seen around food yet to be eaten, or even a single case of disease has been linked back to a rat, you might then reevaluate. I'm talking about how we shouldn't destroy habitats because of an imagined fear that may not even be real.

On the questions of sentience there is a moral question is there a certain level of creature by which moral concerns don't apply at all (and if so where do insects fit in to that). I would argue that it is more of a continuum whereas creatures with any sentience have at least some value and need for moral consideration, but with the amount of moral consideration for a given creature declining as the sentience declines. I'd argue this is a necessary conclusion since the alternatives are cruelty to sentient creatures, claiming that all life is of equal value (i.e. the value of 1 ant is worth the same as 1 human), or an arbitrary distinction about where to draw a line about what consistutes sentience. None of which seems to work.

So for example you might feel morally justified in killing a fly if it was flying all around you and looking like it might try to bite you and being very annoying, but you wouldn't feel justified in killing a dog in a similar situation.

You might feel that if you want to remove an insect from your house you should do so gently without killing it, but you might conclude that trying to avoid harming dust mites is probably taking that too far and that's just something that you should ignore.