Applied arguments and counterarguments in logic and debate

Xeriscaping

An Analysis of the Arguments against Xeriscaping

The person I interviewed about the green lawn in front of his house was my uncle. He did not know off hand how much it cost to maintain the lawn and did not appear to think it too important. On the other hand, he did mention that he had been considering getting an artificial turf.

When I asked if he would consider replacing the green lawn with a xeriscape of California Native plants or drought tolerant plants, he said he was not very interested in that idea -- if he had been he would have done it by now, he said. Apparently, he was familiar with the idea of xeriscaping, and he mentioned the name of a family who lived nearby who had replaced their lawn with a xeriscape of California Native plants. While my uncle agreed that it suited that house and did not look bad, he believed that if the whole neighborhood starting doing it, the place would start to feel too much like a desert. My uncle liked the feeling of being in a kind of manufactured oasis.

When I asked him if he knew or cared that we have a water crisis in Los Angeles, he just chuckled to himself and dismissed the idea as if it were liberal propaganda. He said he would believe we had a water crisis when no more water came out of his tap -- and then he might think about xeriscaping.

At that point I asked him for his main arguments against xeriscaping. In the order in which he gave them, they were:

1) It is not particularly pleasant. It is good for one or two houses -- breaks the feel of monotony -- but nothing can beat a green lawn. At this point, he again reiterated the fact that he would be more inclined to get an artificial turf rather than invest in native flora.

2) If there really is a water problem, we should be looking for ways to solve it -- not trying to get everyone to redo their lawns in ways in which they are not satisfied.

3) Xeriscaping is just the latest push by the liberal agenda to create a bunch of hype regarding a non-problem. All the water we use to keep our lawns green just goes right back into the environment -- nothing is lost. This idea about conserving water is just a scam -- like buying up diamonds or oil: there is no shortage -- it's only a way of monopolizing and making money, and, of course, getting people to buy into it. If there really were a water problem, they would all be looking at agriculture industry -- which uses about 80% of water in CA.

Part II: the Essay

I must admit that my uncle made some interesting arguments, and I was interested in identifying them.

The first of my uncle's arguments was based on his own subjective assessment of what is beautiful and what is not. This was a tricky argument to identify -- first, because its premise was not grounded in objective reasoning: for him, the preference of green lawn over xeriscaping was one of taste.

To answer this argument it would be necessary to convince my uncle to alter his initial premise of what is aesthetically pleasing and what is not. To do this, one could recreate an image of xeriscaping that would be full of natural beauty and taste. On the other hand, he did not say that xeriscaping itself was bad, but that too much of it would not be good. Perhaps, then, one could argue that a little xeriscaping was better than none at all: in this manner, one might convince my uncle to at least apply the technique to a portion of his lawn.

The second argument used by my uncle was a kind of blend of fuzzy logic and inductive reasoning. The argument essentially looks like this: there is a water problem; keeping a green lawn is not part of the problem; let's find out where the problem lies.

The assumption made here is that the water used to keep lawns green is not part of the water problem. Countering this assumption would require some form of statistical analysis or syllogism. Since my uncle is arguing from a generalization that he apparently discerned at some point, it becomes necessary to correct that generalization. If my uncle is swayed by facts, facts then are what are necessary. One could look to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power -- an authority on the subject -- to find out the statistical analyses.

By doing so, one could also see the benefit of cutting water costs -- the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power offers a significant rebate for customers whose water usage is below normal allowance. This latter argument, of course, would only work as a corollary to the main argument; nonetheless, it could prove to be as effective as the first.

The third argument is a kind of transitional argument. My uncle states that what everyone takes for a water problem is not really a water problem at all -- but something else entirely: a scheme cooked up by liberals looking to profit. It is essentially the same sort of transitional argument that Galileo used to discount the Ptolemaic model of the universe (held by the Church in the medieval age) in favor of the Copernican model, which placed the sun at the center of the universe. There was no way to disprove either model (for to what still point in space could you travel to observe the motion of the universe?) -- there were merely the philosophical and pseudo-scientific ramifications of Galileo's argument that found support with the modern world -- which had no use for medieval, hierarchical, or religious models or philosophies.

The same transitional argument is, essentially, being applied here. What my uncle attempts to show is 1) there is no water shortage -- the better explanation for why xeriscaping is being promoted is that such-and-such stands to profit by it; and 2) if there were a water shortage, there are surely bigger consumers of water (such as farmers) than residential landowners with green lawns.