Sierra Club Quote

[Kyle Harris]

• Golf courses are profit-oriented — there is NO subsidy. Fertilizers and pesticides are regulated by governments and PAID for by corporations and through annual budgets. Waste is minimal, if at all. This is a contrast to agrilculture which is highly subsidized and which is less prone to control because it is falls in non-structural categories. In most U.S. states the structural pest control boards regulate golf pesticides — but they have little or NO control of the farmer or his 13-year-old son who is sent out to the north 40 to spray chemicals before a farm league football game.

• Golf course acreage and chemical application — appreciating that it is less today than in the 1980s — is miniscule compared to agrilculture. I base this on acreage of golf courses — perhaps 2,500,000 acres in turf coverage worldwide. Golf courses are NOT a viable focus for environmental concern...they perform a valid duty for communities and are sustainable recreation sites.

Forrest,

Good points, however, I think the validity of these arguments is incomplete without a sufficient benefit analysis.

How do you parametrize the net benefit of golf against the net benefit of agriculture? Is there some analog for golf to bushels/acre, etc?

[Forrest Richardson]

The comparison of golf to agrilculture was not to their benefit(s); but rather to the effects on the environment.

Assume, for a moment, that both golf and agrilculture have equal, positive effects. The question to ask is whether either will have a long term consequence. My conclusion is that golf, due to its very small footprint on the face of the earth, will have virtually no damaging effect when compared to the acreage and tons of chemical sprays involved in agrilculture.

But, I am not damning agrilculture. I am only using it to point out that golf pales in comparison to the potential alarm which agrilcultural pesticides and fertilizers should pose.

[Kyle Harris]

Forrest,

I agree with your conclusion, however, to further the argument with the laymen, a benefit analysis would be useful.

To the laymen, the benefit of golf and agriculture is far from equal. Seeing as this is a debate where laymen stand on the opposing side it may be beneficial to have something to counter such an argument. While the net benefit of golf probably won't come near that of agriculture, it would make the fact that golf courses do have some benefit, while only using a fraction of pesticides, etc. than farms that much more effective.

Showing that the benefit to harm ratio of golf and agriculture is similar or higher in one direction I think is the be all tell all.

You have me convinced, however, I am not crying for the death and elimination of golf courses.

i.e. Benefit(golf):Harm(golf) > Benefit(Agriculture):Harm(Agriculture)

As a counter, it could be said that the golf course industry has been and continues to be very proactive in trying to get the weight of that ratio to the benefit side - as opposed to other industries who have not been.

[Forrest Richardson]

I agree. It is essential that golf do a better job of telling its story. I can attest that — when one of us (architect, management, etc.) — tell of the benefits of golf, we are ignored and discredited. The conclusions must come from other sources.

[Kyle Harris]

Would it be reasonable for the ASGCA and the Audobon Society/USDA/Sierra Club or whomever to commission an outside independent research firm to do such an analysis, such that the report couldn't be considered biased in one direction?

I'd donate more money to the ASGCA (and make another set of templates from your book  ) to further that end.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

This is a no win topic for those that want to take polar positions. Therei s great truth in what the Sierra Club guy said. However it is less true every year. I will say without hesitation most of the supers I know are not paritcularly sensitive to environmental issues. However education and budgets make these things better and I really believe it is and will continue in the positive direction. There is not a reason in the world why golf courses should not be a positive period and surely a net positive within the Sierra Club definition.

[Brent Hutto]

John B,

You are welcome to the honorary (i.e. non-paid) position of whipping boy on the "Sierra Club Quote" thread. Hopefully the supply of green font was exhausted while I held the post but now that you've allowed as to the possibility that some golf course somewhere may have actually caused a negative impact on the environment you're one of the enemy as far as some GCA notables are concerned. Good luck trying to take something other than a "polar position" on this topic around here.

[Lou_Duran]

Brent and John,

Surely MANY courses have had a negative impact on the EXISTING environment (prior to construction).  That does not mean that they have a greater negative impact than the alternative use of the land, assuming of course that private land will likely be used in some manner other than just lying fallow.

In some cases, courses greatly improve the pre-existing environment (e.g. Industry Hills in CA, Victoria National in IN, and numerous others built on garbage dumps and mined properties).  Rustic Canyon and other courses served as fire breaks saving many homes and some businesses.

I have found very few if any serious golfers who are insensitive to the environment.  In fact, having spent a few days in NYC, the littering, vandalism, and overall lack of courtesy that I saw in the city was 180* from what I experienced at the area golf courses (Bethpage might be the only partial exception).

The Sierra Club and other no-growth environmental groups have their own polarity which is anything but linear.  Perhaps they are making the rest of us more environmentally concious, but I fear that they are having a larger negative effect because of their extreme positions.  Not only is their intervention in places such as CA and NY making golf and all other land uses more expensive, but at some point in time many of the properties where they've temporarily arrested development, will be built-on, some for more intensive uses.

Personally, I don't know of many profitable land uses that are better for the environment than golf courses.  200 acres of residential land with a 4:1 yield gets you 800 houses and a whole bunch of concrete, ashphalt, and yards which are heavily fertilized, sprayed for pests, and watered (with the run-off going into gutters and eventually into the natural watersheds).  Ditto for retail and office buildings.  And with local governments now having the Supreme Court's blessing and carte blanch to use eminent domain to increase the tax base, the Sierra Club may wish that they had taken a less confrontational approach with golf course developers.  



   

[Mike_Cirba]

Lou,

I thought you were a card-carrying member of Greenpeace?  

Seriously, nice post, and you do a great job delineating the differences between concern and care for the environment and knee-jerk reactions that guide so many of the "established" environmental self-appointed groups.

But more importantly, I'm disappointed to hear you just spent several day out east and didn't look me up.  Even if you wouldn't accept my token gift of a Hillary 2008 campaign button, we could have at least played some golf!  

[astavrides]

Several people have characterized the Sierra Club as extreme etc. during this thread.  Would someone like to respond/critique to the quote the Sierra Club guy actually made in post #42?

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Gentlemen, this is not about golf courses compared to other types of developements or growth versus no growth. It is just are golf courses a net positive or negative on the environment? I agree with him on this day in 2005. I hope to say that is not the case by 2007. I do not know of any other type of property development which has less of an environmental impact. We will deal with storm water run off from parking lots, the course and maintenance facilities better each year. We will learn to use chemicals with more wisdom as our supers learn more about what they use and alternatives to them. I think golf is on a great roll and deserves a pat on the back for protecting nature as much as we enjoy it while we play.

[Sean_A]

I am in Kyle's corner with the idea of weighting the relative benefits of agriculture and golf.  It is probably best to not even compare the two because they are not comparable.  Golf will always lose out to food.

Much of the the image problem golf sufferes may be due to the high profile courses out in the desert.  I don't know anything about the damage golf does to the desert or how much water is being used on watering golf courses.  However, in a time of feared long term water shortages for the west coast (and certainly for Mexico), perhaps building dozens and dozens of courses in the desert isn't going to boost the image of golf or golfers.  All one has to do is look at photos of golf in the desert and most people's  (not involved with golf) response would be negative.

Ciao

Sean

[Lou_Duran]

Tiger,

A discussion of the environment is meaningless unless human interaction is part of it.  Wasn't Shel Silverstein the one who posed the question about whether a falling tree in an uninhabited forest makes a sound?

Even left to its own vices, the environment is never static.  For example, fire ants advance into an area and they dislocate all sorts of bird species.  Some insects then proliferate, and plant species are also affected.  Whether this makes the environment better or worse is largely a function if you are part of the species which become dominant, or whether you are with the groups being dislocated or annihilated.

For years we were taught that the Amazon River basin is the lungs of the world.  Now the data strongly suggests that the natural growth, death, and decay cycle of plant and animal species make this region one of the largest sources of carbon-based harmful gases in the world.  Some have opined that such releases exceed by a considerable margin the amount of oxygen produced here.

If volcanos, floods, and other natural events are included in our discussion of harming the environment, I think that human interaction in the often-criticized American model can be shown to play a role, though certainly not a terribly significant one.  Golf, within this smaller role, would be a relatively minor player, certainly no more than a face in the crowd.

If the Sierra Club was really honest about the interaction of people with the environment, golf would be given much lesser attention.  Projects such the one near Santa Barbara would be employing people, the grounds would be improving daily, and golfers and visitors in great numbers would be enjoying the beautiful vistas of the Pacific Ocean.  Add to this that some poor endangered specie wouldn't have had to experience the horror of being captured and planted so that a few elites could force their sordid views of the world on the rest of us.

I strongly believe that sensitivity to the environment needs to be culturally ingrained.  This will not happen if the self-appointed, money-raising machines, environmental interest groups continue to cement their energy and positions in such extreme, anti-people, anti-growth endeavors.  Is the existance of a couple spotted owls really worth the work prospects and well- being of a few hundred families?  How about a snail darter or one of hundreds of species of frogs?

I guess that if you're sitting in a beautiful office overlooking the Capitol, Manhattan or the Golden Gate Bridge with a couple of million in the bank and $20,000 a month coming in, these arguments are esoteric, and annoying at best.  After all, the elites are looking at the big picture which somehow incorporates what is best for the rest of us in the long run.

How we make our next monthly house payment, feed and clothe our families, and save for retirement is our problem.  Unless, of course, if we have nothing and assign our humanity to government in exchange for a nominal cradle to grave existance.  How many of you think that our betters really have our best interests at heart?