“It’s a metaphor for what’s wrong with us”: Why on earth does Cate Blanchett hate leaf blowers so much?
Cate Blanchett playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator might just be the most perfect piece of casting ever of a classy, talented performer who is just as adept at comedy as at serious drama.
Blanchett is the modern embodiment of the Golden Age star, and sorry, Meryl Streep, but when the book is written on this era of Hollywood, her name will appear in the ‘Hall of Fame’ section for sure.
Outside of her many onscreen achievements, the Australian is also a keen environmentalist, leading a number of green initiatives and raising awareness of climate change, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and has spoken openly in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, and she even once claimed that she would never become a director, as it would interfere with her humanitarian work.
All of this is nice and all, but her biggest crusade is actually against something much, much lower rent, where in an interview with Architectural Digest, Blanchett revealed that one of the things she hates most in the world is…leaf blowers.
“Leaf blowers need to be eradicated from the face of the Earth,” she raged, “It’s a metaphor for what’s wrong with us as a species. We blow shit from one side of our lawn to the other side, and then the wind is just gonna blow it back.”
OK, nobody likes the annoying noise of a leaf blower, granted, but this is a pretty small issue in the grand scheme of things, given all that she helms onscreen and off, but everyone should get at least a chance to get an innocuous grievance off their chest, and so did Blanchett, or did she…
This is far from the only time the Oscar winner has spoken out against the gardening tool, with that same AD article listing no less than five other interviews in which leaf blowers have come up, and in her most recent tirade on an episode of Subway Takes on YouTube, she laid out the environmental argument against the bothersome device, claiming that using one for just 30 minutes creates “more pollution than driving a pickup from Texas to Alaska”.
She also blamed the United States’ poor public health on a decline in raking, although that one might be a little harder to prove.
This stance might sound extreme, but a quick Google search will give a lot more sympathy towards Blanchett. Leaf blowers are pretty horrendous, powered by petrol (or gasoline, for our American readers), which means they not only do they produce emissions, but pollutants too.
An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal from 2018 links output from the devices to conditions like asthma, heart disease, and cancer, wherein the clouds created when clearing leaves away can blow dust and even animal faeces into people’s homes. Plus, what’s wrong with leaves in the first place? They look messy, sure, but they’re a vital part of the ecosystem, and no wonder so many places have banned leaf blowers from being sold.
As ridiculous as it sounds on paper, Blanchett might really be onto something with this anti-leaf blower rhetoric, and maybe, when she does eventually step away from acting, she can devote herself full-time to ridding the world of this evil once and for all.
