The Playing Field
Sport and culture through the lens of science
by Steven Kotler
18 Holes of Ecological Disaster
Eighteen Holes of Ecological Disaster
Published on May 11, 2008 by Steven Kotler in The Playing Field
It started out with a bit of excitement. The latest issue of “Sport’s Illustrated” arrived, in it a story by novelist Carl Hiaasen. The story is about golf or sort of about golf. It was excerpted from Hiaasen’s forthcoming book: The Downhill Lie and was entitled: “A Dangerous Breed of Beast.” But it was the doosy of a subtitle that really caught my attention: “When the author took up golf again after a long hiatus, he figured all he could hurt was his pride. What his game really threatened was the wildlife of his beloved South Florida.”
I was excited by the idea that as venerable a publication as SI would let a name brand writer like Hiaasen tackle a topic as sticky as the environmental impact of golf. And then I started reading.
The story begins with a section entitled: Toad Golf. In it, the author describes visiting a friend’s house which was being overrun by Bofu marinus, an invasive pest that is threatening domestic wildlife in several states. His friend had a simple solution: relocate the toads to a neighbor’s yard by smacking them with a nine iron.
Now, if I walked into a friend’s house and found him hitting toads with golf clubs, the first thing I would do is start hitting my friend with a golf club. Hard.
But not Hiaasen. This asshole picked up a pitching wedge and joined in.
And that’s not even the worst offense. In fact, that’s a minor blip in a major travesty. The travesty is thus: there’s nary a mention of the ecological disaster that we call golf.
Don’t kid yourself, golf is a true nightmare. And America is the worst offender.
The US is now home to 18,000 golf courses, more than half of the world’s 35,000. These courses cover 1.7 million acres and soak up 4 billion gallons of water daily.
In a tropical country such as Thailand, the average golf course uses as much water as 60,000 rural villagers. Here, in the US, the news has lately been buzzing over the idea that a dredging channel cut in 1962, is accidentally draining 2.5 billion gallons a day out of Lake Michigan. This draining is considered a devastating ecological crisis worthy of immediate action. And that number is slightly more than half that golf is taking from us each day.
Even worse, the water that’s evaporating off golf courses and re-entering the atmosphere is loaded down with all sorts of nasty stuff. Golf Course News recently reported the results of a study done in New York that found the typical golf course uses 2.7 times more pesticides per acre than farmland.
And, according to the Rachel Carson Council, 29 of the 49 most common pesticides used by groundskeepers are found on the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory. These include such winners as the herbicide “atrazine” which is a carcinogen, mutagen, immunotoxin and causes adrenal damage to boot and the insecticide “bendiocarb,” which causes cataracts, lung and brain damage, and is a suspected mutagen.
This might help explain why a 1994 University of Iowa College of Medicine study found that an unusually high number of golf course superintendents had died from cancer.
While golfers like to claim that they’re creating green spaces in areas that might be otherwise paved over, what they fail to mention is there’s little difference. Most animals don’t like open spaces. Anything that is small enough to be eaten by raptors is smart enough to hug the treeline. Creating pockets or forest surrounded by fairways is the same as isolating the resident animals on islands. Meaning there’s not enough genetic diversity on these islands to insure a healthy breeding population so inbreeding is the only option. Wait a few generations and the results of incest are simple: no more animals.
The point, as pointed out by Chee Yoke Ling and Mohammad Ferhan Ferrari of the Malaysia-based Asia-Pacific People's Environment Network (APPEN), is simple: "Golf development is one of the most unsustainable and damaging activities to people and the environment."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-playing-field/200805/18-holes-ecological-disaster
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