Cannabis lowers Greenhouse emissions, but DEA didn't get the memo.

[99th_Monkey]

Hemp helps with green movement
Lucas Coppes

As environmental consciousness increases, a plant with great potential to accommodate our generation’s awareness has re-emerged, but its negative associations leave some obstacles to overcome.

Hemp, which is too often associated with marijuana, does come from the same family of plants, but yields a fraction of the active ingredient, THC.

Hemp has the uncanny ability to help in solving many of the world’s major dilemmas from nutrition problems to the greenhouse effect.

In 1938, Popular Mechanics named hemp the first “billion dollar crop” for the U.S., which it could use to produce everything from fuel, paper and oil to medicine and dynamite. According to Jack Herer in his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, if we still used the same process being used in 1916 to produce hemp paper today, it could replace 40 to 70 per cent of all pulp paper.

Today, hemp will produce 4.1 times more pulp for paper over a 20-year rotation compared to trees. For example, supermarket paper bags from trees and chemical-based plastic bags would be replaced with a biodegradable, more durable paper that’s acquired from an annually renewable source: cannabis hemp.

In the U.S., 82 per cent of spending goes towards energy to maintain a home or to produce its products. Development in biomass energy has exploded in the last few years, and cellulose from things like corn and sugar cane can be converted to methanol and then to a high-octane lead-free gasoline. Hemp prevails again, as it produces the most net biomass, and has from four to 100 times more cellulose than other products currently in use.

Both paper and fuel show major benefits for combating the greenhouse effect, as we would keep trees alive and allow them to grow and keep 10 times more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Hemp is an annually renewable resource, such that the carbon dioxide it emits when used as gasoline is recycled to keep the plant alive during its next generation. In the ground it expels oxygen and recycles the carbon for our energy uses.
http://rinf.com/alt-news/environmental-news/cannabis-lowers-greenhouse-emissions/1807/

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In related news on the War on Drugs, DEA admits that 98% of 98 Percent Of All Domestically Eradicated Marijuana Is “Ditchweed,”
DEA Admits "98% of all Cannabis plants seized are not psychoactive"

More than 98 percent of all of the marijuana plants seized by law enforcement in the United States is feral hemp not cultivated cannabis, according to newly released data by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program and the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.
http://rinf.com/alt-news/contributions/general/98-of-all-cannabis-plants-seized-are-not-psychoactive/1754/

[AmyDeLune]

1. I thought your thread title read "Cannibals lowers greenhouse emissions..."

*whew!*
I do love hemp products though, incredibly durable cloth, wonderful paper, edible seeds loaded nutrients, and so many other things. So silly for it to be an illegal crop.

[99th_Monkey]

3. Shhh, or Bush will appoint Hannibal Lecter to head-up the EPA. n/t

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. On a slightly related topic; How do they make those clear rolling papers?

I know they're plant cellulose, but it felt like plastic. Can it be used as a replacement for oil for some products?

[99th_Monkey]

4. good question, but I don't know the answer.

but i know what you mean, as I got creeped out using one due to how much it felt like plastic.

[tridim]

5. I don't know how they make the papers, but cannabis is full of resin

Resin that can be used for plastics and thousands of other products including medicine and a wonderful intoxicant that doesn't harm the body like alcohol can.