Lawn crew using battery blowers in Washington DC. Soon this will be the only legal form of such equipment in the nation’s capital. (QCDC photo.)

Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. This week she wrote about the new legislation that will ultimately ban two-stroke gas-powered equipment across the state. More about the California law is here:

Here is how Abcarian begins her column:

If a genie gave me three wishes, I swear I would ask for world peace, universal healthcare and the demise of gas-powered leaf blowers.
Like so many people, I work at home. I don’t have a gardener, but I am surrounded by neighbors who do. And every week, without fail, their men arrive armed with leaf blowers, swinging them like, um, elephant trunks and shattering my nerves

And it continues strong from there — including the background on Los Angeles’s experience in having introduced such a ban “too soon.” It was applied back in the 1990s, before battery-powered equipment became a plausible alternative. Now battery equipment is not just “plausible” but the obvious destined winner in this field.

Abcarian’s article is called “Add this to the list of things I’ll never miss: The gas-powered leaf blower.“ It’s worth reading in full.