Go ahead -- bury your head in the sand if you want.

But, if it hasn't happened already, sooner or later you will find yourself fighting calls to ban pesticides and fertilizers on residential and commercial lawns, school lawns, athletic fields and golf courses.

More than 70% of readers say they are already dealing with environmental activism in their region. Click here for the full-size view.

If your company provides residential and commercial lawn care, at the very least, you'll wake up one day to find your company's resources sapped by trying to comply with convoluted neighbor notification laws. LM.net's May online survey found that 36% of readers are already fighting the PR battle in their regions.

Commercial lawn care companies in Rochester, NY, got that message loud and clear last month (see "Monroe County [Rochester], NY, adopts controversial neighbor notification law"). At nearly the same time, Connecticut legislators came to the confusing decision to ban pesticides on pre-school and elementary school lawns -- but not on high school lawns and athletic fields (see "Connecticut passes pesticide prohibition on public and private elementary and preschool lawns").

The first ray of reason in this emotional debate comes from Lawrence, KS ("Cost considerations downscale pesticide-free park effort in Lawrence, KS").

Environmentalists had demanded that the city transition all of its 52 parks to pesticide-free management by 2009. Parks and recreation department employees created an elaborate budget showing it would be too expensive. Furthermore, the employees testified the quality of the city's parks would suffer. Environmentalists countered the city employees inflated their budget estimates and were just resistant to trying pesticide-free management.

After a series of public meetings and a lively debate on May 17, the city commissioners hit on a compromise: dedicate one major city park to pesticide-free management as a test case. Parks and Recreation Department employees will monitor the quality of the results and report on the actual cost of pesticide-free management.

Both the Parks and rec employees and the environmentalists seemed satisfied with this compromise. I think one reason this worked is that the city chose a centrally located, seven-acre park, not just a token flower bed or two. The city commissioners demonstrated they are seriously considering the concerns on both sides of the issue.

If you've got the time, I encourage you to scan through the online transcript of the May 17 debate (to find it quickly, click on that link, then use your browser's search function to find the word "pesticide"). Virtually every angle of this important debate gets an airing. You can actually see democracy at work as the compromise gets hammered out.

The Lawrence, KS, model has to be better than lawsuits and strident local ad campaigns.The key to their win-win compromise solution was listening seriously to all sides. By next year, city commissioners will have actual cost data and quality results to evaluate, rather than emotional opinions from either side of the argument.

Why wait passively to have an unreasonable, unworkable solution shoved down your throat? Reach out to your local and regional Green Industry associations and get active.

And don't fall into the trap of vilifying or denigrating environmental activists. They are citizens, just like you. Their concerns need to be taken seriously -- and they need to be respectfully persuaded of the validity of your concerns.

It seems to me Green Industry companies and organizations have two choices: participate and prosper; or remain apathetic and watch your organization's horizons shrink.

Dialogue and democracy: they are the very foundation of our way of life.