Grass lawns are extremely damaging to the environment.

Lets think about all of the resources you are wasting and all of the environmental damage you are doing by just maintaining your lawn.

You may need to use weed-killers to kill off invading weeds. You may need to waste thousands of gallons of water if the summer is too dry. You may need to use pesticides to keep pests like grubs and cutworms from killing your lawn and to keep out infestations of flees and ticks. Lasty, and most damning of all for grass lawns, you will need to mow your lawn about every week, wasting massive amounts of energy that represent 5% of all air pollution in the U.S..

So why do we still have them? Well, the most simple reason is because we need plants in our yards. Plants help make the soil more permeable to allow rain water to pass through and the roots help to prevent erosion. On top of that, grass lawns lower the temperature in the area around them which helps keep cooling costs down in the summer. Most importantly, however, is the cultural significance of having a healthy, green lawn.

So what is the solution? Well, I propose that we replace our grass lawns with clover.

• It's drought-tolerant and will stay green all summer. This is because of two things. One, it has longer roots, enabling it to access water at deeper levels. Two, it is very dense, and is able to trap moisture that would otherwise evaporate away in the hot summer sun.

• It is free of weeds like crabgrass and dandelions because it chokes out all the competition.

• It doesn't need to be fertilized because it is naturally lush. This is because it actually takes nitrogen from the air and pumps it into the soil via the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in nodes along the roots.

• It is also relatively pest-free, so you don't have to bother with pesticides.

• It aerates the soil on its own, so that you don't have to worry about counteracting soil compaction.

• It is soft to walk on. Instead of prickly blades, you have springy, dense leaves. It actually feels more like a carpet than a ground cover.

• It has mildly attractive flowers that attract beneficial insects, including honeybees and butterflies.

• It doesn't suffer from dead spots caused by dog urine.

• Lastly, and probably best of all, it rarely has to be mowed. In fact, depending on how high you like to keep your lawn, you may never have to mow it if your area doesn't get a lot of rain.

tl;dr Grass lawns are bad. I say we use clover instead.