Seeing how Bruce can't find any mandates

[r3020]

Here you go.

The once-greater State of Minnesota is apparently trying to play catch up to the wokesters in California with a new bill introduced in the state House that would ban gasoline powered lawn and garden tools.

The bill was authored by Democrat state Reps. Jerry Newton of Coon Rapids and Heather Edelson of Edina and would take effect on January 1, 2025 with a prohibition on "fossil fuel powered" lawn and garden tools that requires "new lawn and garden equipment sold, offered for sale, or distributed in or into Minnesota must be powered solely by electricity."

The common tools covered by the ban would be "equipment powered by a spark ignition engine rated at or below 19 kilowatts or 25 gross horsepower" such as a lawnmower, leaf blower, hedge clipper, chainsaw, lawn edger, string trimmer, or brush cutter. 

While plug-in or battery-powered hedge trimmers, lawnmowers, or leaf blowers may be a tenable option for those like Reps. Newton and Edelson who live in the suburbs of the Twin Cities or don't have much of a yard, most residents in the rest of Minnesota would find non-fossil fuel powered lawn tools useless for their properties. And likely put a serious dent in the profitability of lawn and garden service companies who wouldn't be able to do as much per day due to downtime needed to recharge their tools or the cost of needing twice the amount of equipment to do the same amount of work as gas-powered tools.

As a writeup in the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment notes of the proposed ban on "fossil fuel powered" equipment:

According to Bob Vila’s website, this would effectively outlaw any push-mower that is gas-powered, and it would impact most riding lawnmowers, which use engines topping out at 24 horsepower, as well.

While electric leaf blowers or hedge clippers may work fine for urban and suburban dwellers, these tools are entirely insufficient for anyone who needs to do serious work out in the country. Felling trees or cutting firewood on a wood lot with a battery-powered electric chainsaw? Give me a break.

This legislation wisely leaves snowblowers off the list of contraband, but its introduction demonstrates that urban and suburban liberals have no idea how rural Minnesotans live their lives, and it suggests that they don’t care to learn.

It's hard to imagine hunters (such as those in this writer's family back home in Minnesota) would be able to find a plug for their electric chainsaw while miles deep into grouse country in order to chop some trees for fire, shelter, or other needs. The only option would be to plug their "green" electric chainsaw into a gas-powered generator which defeats the entire purpose while also illustrating one part of climate warriors' shortsighted do-goodism. All that electric equipment relies, unsurprisingly, on electricity...which comes from generation plants that are often powered by fossil fuels. 

But for the Democrats in control of the Minnesota state House and Senate, pushing policies that are the norm in California and sound like something President Joe Biden would approve of in his crusade to end fossil fuels — regardless of their impact on Minnesota's businesses and residents — is apparently just fine.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2023/02/20/democrats-introduce-ban-on-gas-powered-lawn-to...

[sdholloway56]

I’d say 2030 would be more practical.

It would give folks more time to convert a big chunk of their ruburban estates to prairie, butterfly habitat or something less useless than the dumbest thing in the world- acres of turf grass.

BTW, that is a ban on sales of new ones, not on having them. So, like climate killer cars, extinction would be a couple decades on. Not something that even a young person should blow a gasket over.

[sdholloway56]

Also gives manufactures lots of time to convert without undue hardship.

BTW, small engines are absolutely horrible in terms of old fashioned pollution and there’s now tech to easily replace a lot of them.

[sdholloway56]

That’s not primarily a carbon issue- it is plain old fashioned nasty pollutants that directly harm people.

[bruce MN]

Nox…BTW, that is a ban on sales of new ones, not on having them. So, like climate killer cars, extinction would be a couple decades on.

—————

There is a sizable industry everywhere around keeping pre fuel injected electronic panel fired internal combustion cars, trucks, tractors etc. running.  There is no reason to believe that keeping old gas engines running won’t go on forever.  Good money in it, in parts trading, in learning the trade.

I can’t believe that there is a small town rural school in the country where small engine maintenance and repair won’t be a big part of the vo-ag and industrial arts curriculum as long as there is one unit left in the school district.

And I’d give long, long odds that the clown who wrote this for either the totally fascist Center for the American Experiment or for Townhall could tell the difference between a spark plug and dipstick.

[r3020]

A quality product sells it's self without the need for mandates. Mandates nothing but Almighty Big Government picking winners and losers. Mandates are nothing but fascist stateism.

[Edmund55]

Mandates nothing but Almighty Big Government picking winners and losers.

Good thing whales don't have a say in these big government mandates because whales are on the environmentalist list of -I don't care if they go extinct-

Of course 50% of people say they are for these mandates but if the mandates were voted on about 5% would actually vote in favor of these mandates and then when polled how they voted, 50% would say they were in the 5% - it what hypocrites do.

[aljessen61]

Morons. 

[rickgthf]

When I was a boy in the '50s, my parents retire the parlor stove to the old granary up in the barn and installed a gravity-style coal/wood furnace in the basement.  In the '60's, thinking to be modern, they removed the old octopus and installed an oil-fired forced air furnace but after the OPEC oil crisis in the '70s they dragged out the parlor stove and went back to supplementing with wood.  By that time most of us kids had left home so the job of keeping the wood fire going fell to my mother. My father & my younger brothers cut the wood and stacked it in the woodshed but sometimes they didn't do too good a job cutting & splitting it to the proper size.  My mother got tired of complaining about it so she bought herself an electric chainsaw.  Even though she never learned to use a gasoline-powered chainsaw, she soon became quite adept with the smaller electric version. After that, whenever she didn't like the look of a piece of wood, she had no trouble "widdling it down to size". 

   After my parents died, I inherited the saw and soon discovered just how handy it was.  I keep it around the shop and whenever I need to modify a piece of wood for whatever reason, I'm just as likely to grab it & plug it in rather than fussing with one of my several gas-powered saws.

  If I was a homeowner living in the suburbs where nothing is more than 150ft from a receptacle, who needed the very occasional chainsaw, an electric chainsaw would do just fine.

[r3020]

And they sell them in the store everyday. No mandate needed. Thank you for proving my point.