The resulting life cycle GHG emissions range, based on location, from 2,283 to 5,184?kg CO2-equivalent per kg of dried flower. The life cycle GHG emissions are largely attributed to electricity production and natural gas consumption from indoor environmental controls, high-intensity grow lights and the supply of carbon dioxide for accelerated plant growth.

Understanding the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of commercial cannabis production is essential for consumers, the general public and policy makers to improve decision making to mitigate the effects of climate change. Since recreational legalization was pioneered in Colorado in 2012, the US legal cannabis industry has rapidly grown from a US$3.5 billion industry to US$13.6 billion in annual sales, with states like Colorado selling more than 530?tonnes of legally grown cannabis product every year1,2. Additionally, with 48% of adults in the United States having tried cannabis at some point in their life and 13% of adults having consumed in the last year, substantial demand exists at the consumer level3. Despite its rapid growth and widespread use, there is minimal quantitative understanding of the GHG emissions from legal indoor cannabis cultivation.

The initial amendment legalizing recreational cannabis in Colorado required the majority of cannabis product to be sold at a collocated retail location4. This restriction led to cultivation practices occurring within the city limits of Denver, CO. This, along with security, theft and quality concerns, consequently led to the cultivation of cannabis indoors. Although data concerning the exact amount of cannabis by cultivation method are not currently publicly available for the United States, a recent survey of producers in North America showed that 41% of respondents indicated that their grow operations occur solely indoors5. It is well known that indoor cannabis cultivation requires significant energy input, reflected in high utility bills and industry reports4,6,7,8,9. However, many of these large energy loads, along with other material inputs required to cultivate indoor cannabis, have not yet been equated to GHG emissions.

Previously, rudimentary quantifications of GHG emissions from indoor cannabis have been performed by equating emissions with electricity use from monthly bills6,7. However, this approach omits additional GHG emissions from other energy sources, such as natural gas, upstream GHG emissions from the production and use of material inputs, and downstream GHG emissions from the handling of waste. The most thorough report quantifying GHG emissions from indoor cannabis is from Mills10, which states that growing 1?kg of cannabis indoors releases 4,600?kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). However, the scope of the work was intended to be a central estimate, representing a singular US location case study for the industry’s general practices. Furthermore, Mills10 conducted this study prior to legalization and only used data from small-scale experimental systems, thus lacking validation of full-scale commercial grow operations...

...An indoor cannabis cultivation model was developed to track the necessary energy and materials required to grow cannabis year-round in an indoor, warehouse-like environment. This environment maintains climate conditions as required for the cannabis plants, yielding a consistent product regardless of weather conditions. The model calculates the necessary energy to maintain these indoor climate conditions by using a year’s worth of hourly weather data from more than 1,000 locations in the United States11. The analysed locations are independent of current legal status and represent hypothetical grow facilities in all 50 US states. The model then converts the required energy, supplied from electricity and natural gas, into GHG emissions through electrical grid emissions data from 26 regions in the United States12 and life cycle inventory (LCI) data13,14...

a, Cumulative GHG emissions from cultivating cannabis indoors interpolated within eGRID electricity region boundaries. eGRID, Emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database. b, Natural gas required to maintain indoor environmental conditions. c, Electricity required to maintain indoor environmental conditions and high-intensity grow lights. d, GHG emissions for the US electricity regions modelled. Full resolution figures are provided in Supplementary Figs. 1–4.

GHG emissions from indoor cannabis production at ten of the 1,011 locations modelled. The GHG emissions totals represent individual simulation results based on modelling input parameters specific to each location. The positive values represent released GHG emissions and the negative value represents stored GHG emissions based upon the model system boundary. The HVAC labels in the main figure refer to the major equipment used to manipulate outside air to meet inside condition criteria, whereas the indoor environmental controls in ‘Other’ are supplemental (suppl.) systems representing additional equipment located inside grow rooms that aid in maintaining environmental conditions.

The HVAC systems are responsible for modifying air temperature and humidity to an allowable range before being supplied to the cannabis plants. This is critical to maintaining plant health as sudden changes in temperature and humidity can shock the plants and ultimately lead to crop damage and product loss. Additionally, cannabis plants require a regular supply of fresh air to help moderate humidity and oxygen levels. In this work, an air supply rate of 30 volumetric air changes per hour (ACH) was assumed. This value represents the average value from the literature, which reports values as high as 60?ACH and as low as 12?ACH (Supplementary Table 1). For comparison, the recommended ventilation for homes is 0.35?ACH and operating rooms in hospitals require a minimum of 15?ACH15,16. Air condition modifications and supply by HVAC are cumulatively shown to be the largest contributor to overall GHG emissions regardless of location (see Supplementary Table 2 for all contributions).

Impact of ACH on GHG emissions from indoor cannabis cultivation for the same ten locations displayed in Fig. 2. The baseline assumption for this study was 30?ACH, shown in red.

Although there are many hurdles associated with shifting cannabis growth to legal and well-regulated greenhouse and outdoor cultivation practices, preliminary investigations into the potential difference in GHG emissions when switching to greenhouse and outdoor cultivation practices indicated reductions of 42 and 96%, respectively6,7. It is important to note that these reports are limited in scope and resolution as the GHG emissions are based primarily on electricity consumption through monthly bills. Therefore, the current state of the industry would benefit from understanding the true GHG emissions of greenhouse and outdoor cultivation at a similar resolution to the work presented here to allow real comparison between the three cultivation methods. The results of this study affirm that more than 80% of the GHG emissions from all indoor cannabis locations assessed are caused by practices directly linked to indoor cultivation methods, specifically indoor environmental control, high-intensity grow lights and the supply of CO2 for increased plant growth. If indoor cannabis cultivation were to be fully converted to outdoor production, these preliminary estimates show that the state of Colorado, for example, would see a reduction of more than 1.3% in the state’s annual GHG emissions (2.1?MtCO2e)24.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan “a fever dream of the cancel-culture crew,” Senator Ted Cruz accused Democrats of a “politically correct plot to cancel poverty.”

“Poverty has been a part of American life since this country was founded, in 1776, but that apparently means nothing to the Democrat Cancel Culture Gang,” Cruz said. “In their intolerant view, poverty is somehow no longer appropriate.”

He warned that, far from being Democrats’ ultimate goal, “cancelling poverty is just the beginning.”

“If you read the fine print, they also want to cancel hunger and homelessness,” he said. “And, if you’re used to living without health insurance, sorry—that’s yet another American tradition they want to cancel.”

“We should have seen this coming,” he added. “First they came for Mr. Potato Head.”

Advice My Parents Gave Me: Go to college and major in what you love.

Advice I Will Give My Kids: Go to college only if you’ll major in science, engineering, or money. It’s a bleak job market, and majoring in English literature or anything with the word “English” in it has been useless since the Taft Administration.



My Parents: Never show up to a party empty-handed.

Me: Never show up to a party. Send a text to the host twenty minutes before the party starts to say that you’re “sooooooo sorry” to cancel but your stomach is feeling “weird.”



My Parents: To find a job, walk into the offices of ABC News’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” and ask for one.

Me: Apply to jobs via LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, or nepotism. Write a cover letter and attach your résumé, then manually enter the same information through the company’s portal, which looks as though it was designed in Microsoft Paint. Do this twenty times a day for two years, and you’re bound to make it to a third round of phone interviews before getting ghosted.



My Parents: Don’t put photos of yourself on the Internet. You’ll get kidnapped!

Me: Post thousands of carefully curated photos of your life on Instagram so you can build a following and attract sponsors who reflect your core values, such as Bacardi and MeUndies.



My Parents: Spend your twenties finding true love within a two-mile radius of your village.

Me: Spend your twenties moving between L.A. and New York to figure out what you want in your ideal partner by dating all the worst people from both coasts and Austin, Texas.



My Parents: Show how much you appreciate your friends by making them elaborate, cellophane-wrapped gift baskets. Fill the baskets with gourmet biscuits, teas, and an ornate sugar spoon that says “Gimme a little sugar, baby.”

Me: Just Venmo them five dollars.

My Parents: Never date someone who rides a motorcycle.

Me: Never date someone who rides a unicycle ironically (unless the person got a MacArthur “genius” grant for it)...

The group considered Texas’ oldest and largest electricity cooperative has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying it can’t pay money wanted by the state’s grid operator in connection with power outages during a major winter storm that hit in February.

Brazos Electric Power Cooperative filed its bankruptcy petition March 1 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The company said it received a $2.1 billion charge from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the group that maintains and operates much of the state’s electricity grid. Brazos Electric is the wholesale energy provider for its 16-member cooperative.

Texas’ deregulated power market, which is not connected to other U.S. electricity transmission systems, means that most of the state’s power customers are not beholden to any one energy provider. Instead, customers can choose among dozens of electricity retailers on an open market.

Electricity generators—companies such as NRG and Vistra—produce power, which can then be sold by retail electric providers. Those retail companies include Griddy, which is being sued by the state attorney general’s office for sending customers bills for as much as $5,000 for the cost of power during the weeklong storm.

State officials said they received more than 400 complaints about Griddy in less than two weeks. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the lawsuit said Griddy deceived customers when it promised low “wholesale” energy prices...

“It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.”

These stirring words, spoken in 1953 by then US president Dwight Eisenhower, are worth recalling as the world marks the anniversaries of two devastating tragedies involving nuclear technology: the Fukushima disaster in Japan on 11 March 2011, and the catastrophic accident at Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine on 26 April 1986.

In Japan, some 19,300 lives were lost as a result of an earthquake that occurred off the island of Honshu and the tsunami that followed. The tsunami also swept over the protective sea wall around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and the subsequent flooding led to the partial meltdown of three reactor cores, causing fires and explosions. Twenty-five years earlier, human error resulted in a meltdown at the Chernobyl site, blowing the roof off a nuclear reactor and releasing radiation across Europe...

In addition to the deaths and health risks, the cost of the damages caused by Chernobyl is thought to exceed US$200 billion, and the Japan Center for Economic Research estimates the costs of decontaminating the Fukushima site to be between $470 billion and $660 billion. In the wake of the disaster, 12 of Japan’s reactors have been permanently shut; a further 24 remain closed pending ongoing safety reviews, which are adding to the costs.

By contrast, although renewable-energy technologies are still in their relative infancy, their costs are falling and their regulation is much more straightforward. This is important: the technology used to turn on lights or charge mobile phones shouldn’t need to involve national or international defence apparatus.

Clearly, nuclear energy will be with us for some time. New plants are being built and older ones will take time to decommission. But it is not proving to be the solution it was once seen as for decarbonizing the world’s energy market. Nuclear power has benefits, but its continued low take-up indicates that some countries think these are outweighed by the risks. For others, the development of nuclear energy is unaffordable. If the world is to achieve net zero carbon emissions, the focus must be on renewable energies — and one of their greatest benefits is that their sources are available, freely, to all nations.

One evening in June 2011, Masaharu Tsubokura went to bed and found he couldn’t close his left eye. His face was paralyzed, and for a few weeks the doctor who had spent months counseling residents displaced by a massive nuclear disaster was himself a patient.

The paralysis was temporary. But the stress that caused it has been a constant in Tsubokura’s life since he volunteered in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, days after the triple catastrophe that rocked it on 11 March 2011: a magnitude 9 earthquake, a tsunami that rose up to 40 meters, and multiple meltdowns and explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. What was meant to be a short volunteer stint giving health checks to evacuees became a career that has lasted 10 years and counting.

In the months after the disaster, Tsubokura moved from routine medicine to measuring radiation exposure. He became adept at explaining radiation basics and risks to residents and officials. “He spent a huge amount of time in town hall meetings, lectures, and dialogues with local people, which made him respected and trusted,” says Kenji Shibuya, a global health scholar at King’s College London who collaborated with him. And Tsubokura soon reached a controversial conclusion: The evacuation had a far bigger impact on health than the radiation. “No one died of radiation,” he says, whereas uprooting tens of thousands of people caused clear social and health problems.

Early on, Tsubokura did his best to allay fears among evacuees and residents living just outside the evacuation zone. Many people welcomed his reassurances, though some accused him of being an apologist for the power company and the government. But the physician, now 39, persisted.

“Many people would have left and said, ‘OK, I tried my best,’” says Gilles Hériard-Dubreuil, a Paris-based consultant involved in community rehabilitation in Belarus after the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in Ukraine in 1986. It’s a sign of Tsubokura’s courage and humanity, he says, “that he maintained his presence and he faced the adversity.”

Splitting his time between jobs at hospitals in Tokyo and Fukushima, Tsubokura accumulated data that would put the risks in perspective. In more than 140 papers, he and colleagues have documented the relatively low radiation exposure of Fukushima residents and the health impacts of the evacuation—a high death toll among the elderly, increases in chronic diseases, and a decline in general well-being...