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ARRoGANT CoURiERS WiTH ESSaYS
Grade Level: Type of Work Subject/Topic is on:
[ ]6-8 [ ]Class Notes [Article on Hemp from ]
[ ]9-10 [ ]Cliff Notes [the April 1990 High ]
[x]11-12 [ ]Essay/Report [Times Magazine ]
[ ]College [x]Misc [ ]
Dizzed: 11/94 # of Words:4495 School: ? State: ?
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Article copied work for work from April 1990 Issue of High Times Magazine
pages 37-41 and page 57.
"OUR CHALLENGE TO THE WORLD: TRY TO PROVE US WRONG--
If all fossil fuels and their derivatives (coal, oil, natural gas,
synthetic fibers and petrochemicals) as well as the deforestation of trees
for paper and agriculture (e.g., Brazilian & Indonesian rainforests), are
banned from use in order to save the planet, preserve the ozone layer and
reverse the greenhouse effect with its global warming trend: Then there is
only one known renewable natural resource able to provide all(underlined)
of the following goods and essentials such as paper and textiles; meet all
of the world's transportation, home and industrial energy needs, and clean
the atmosphere-- all at the same time--our old standby that did it all
before: Cannabis Hemp. . .Marijuana!
The industrial revolution moved hemp to a place of lesser importance in
world commerce due to the lack of mechanized harvesting and breaking
technology needed for mass production. But this natural resource was far
too valuable to be relegated to the back burner of history forever.
In 1916, a U.S. Department of Agriculture bulletin predicted that once a
docortication and harvesting machine was developed, cannabis would again
become America's largest agricultural industry. Some 22 years later,
Popular Mechanics introduced a new generation of investors to just such a
device, (See the February 1989 issue of HIGH TIMES.) which brings us to
this next bit of history:
A PLAN TO SAVE OUR FOREST
Some canniabis plant strains regularly reach treelike heights of 20 feet
or more in one growing season.
In 1916, the U.S. Department of Agriculture wrote in special bulletin
No. 404 that one acre of cannabis hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year
period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees over the
same 20- year period being cut down; and this process would use only 1/5 to
1/7 as much sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin
that binds with the fibers of the pulp.
All this lignin must be broken down to make pulp paper. Hemp is only 4%
lignin, while trees are 18-30% lignin. Thus hemp provides four times as
much pulp with five to seven times less pollution (and yet, today is
totally illegal, as it has been for the last half-century).
This hemp pulp-paper potential depended on the invention and engineering
of new machines for stripping the hemp by modern technology. This would
also lower the cost of and demand for lumber for housing and at the same
time help re-oxygenate the planet.
As an example: If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were legal
today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including
computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.
Pulp paper made from rags or machined from 60% to 100% hemp hurds is
stronger and more flexible than paper made from wood pulp and makes a less
expensive, more ecological paper, and a better one.
CONSERVATION & SOURCE REDUCTION
Source reduction is a cost-cutting waste control method often called for
by environmentalists: reduction of the source of pollution, usually from
manufacturing with petrochemicals or their derivatives.
In the supermarket when you are asked to choose paper or plastic for
your bags, you are faced with an environmental dilemma; paper from trees
that were cut, or plastic bags made from fossil fuel and chemicals. With a
third choice--hemp hurd paper--available, one could choose a biodegradable,
durable paper from an annually renuewable source, the hemp plant.
The goal is to reduce the source of pollution. Whether the source of
the pollution is CFC's (chloro-flourocarbons) from spray cans, computers
and refrigeration, or tritium and plutonium produced for military uses, or
the sulfuric acids used by papermakers, reducing the source of pollution is
the goal.
The environmental advantages of harvesting hemp annually--leaving the
trees in the ground!--make papermaking from hemp hurds critical for source
reduction, along with the use of hemp to replace fossil fuel as an energy
source.
ENERGY AND THE ECONOMY
The book Solar Gas (1980), Science Digest, Omni Magazine, The Alliance
for Survival, the "Green Party" of West Germany and others put the total
figure of our energy costs at 80% of the total dollar expenses of living
for each human being.
In validation: 82% of the total value of all issues traded on the New
York Stock Exchange, other world stock exchanges, ect., are tied directly
to:
*Energy supply companies (Exxon, Shell, etc.) wells/coal mines (Con
Edison, and so forth);
*Energy transportation (pipeline companies, oil shipping and delivery
companies) or;
*Refineries and retail sales(Exxon, Mobile, Shell, So. Calif. Edison, NY
Edison, et al.)
Americans--5% of world population--in their drive for more 'net worth'
and 'productivity' use 25% to 40% of the worlds' energy. The hidden cost
to the environment cannot be measured. Eighty-two percent of all your
dollars translates roughly into 33 of every 40 hours you work going to pay
for the ultimate energy cost in the goods and services, one way or another
(transportation, heating, cooking, lighting) you purchase.
Our current fossil energy sources also supply about 80% of all solid and
airborne pollution which is slowly poisoning the planet. (See U.S. EPA
report 1983-89 on coming world catastrophe from carbon dioxide imbalance
caused by burning fossil fuels). The cheapest substitute for these
expensive and wasteful energy methods is not wind or solar panels, nuclear,
geothermal, and the like, but using the evenly distributed light of the sun
to grow biomass. The world's most efficient solar power source has already
been created.
It is a plant. And on a global scale, the most energy efficient plant
is hemp, an annually renewable resource able to replace all fossil fuels.
The early Oil Barons (Rockefeller, Standard; Rothschild's Shell; et al)
paranoically aware in the Twenties of the possibilities of Ford's methanol
scheme (Henry Ford even grew marijuana on his estate after 1937 to prove
the cheapness of methanol), dropped and kept oil prices incredibly low,
between $1 to $4 per barrel (there are 42 gallons in an oil barrel) for
almost 50 years until 1970. So low, in fact, that no other energy source
could compete with them. . . and once they were sure of the lack of
competition, the price jumped to almost $40 per barrel in the next ten
years.
Suddenly, for whatever reason, we are now in an era when oil is not only
prohibitively expensive, but embargoes or wars by foreign nations, i.e.,
OPEC, Libya, Iran, etc., can virtually hold the U.S. hostage; that's how
dependent we are on foreign sources of polluting petroleum products.
Biomass conversion to fuels should begin immediately to both stop planetary
pollution and make us energy independent.
By the year 2000, the U.S. will have burned 80% of its petroleum
resources, while our coal reserves may last 100 years or so longer. But
the decision to continue burning coal has serious drawbacks.
This high-sulfur coal is responsible for our acid rain, which already
kills 50,000 Americans and 5,000 to 10,000 Canadians annually.
CLEAN, RENEWABLE FUEL SOURCE
Fuel is not synonymous with petroleum, let's get over that. And new
hemp/biomass energy systems will create millions of new jobs!
Hemp biomass can replace every type of fossil fuel energy product. When
hemp is grown for biomass as a renewable energy crop, CO2 (carbon dioxide)
is breathed in by the living plants to build cell structure; the left over
oxygen is breathed out replenishing earth's air supply. Then when the
carbon rich hemp biomass is burned for energy the CO2 is released back into
the air. The CO2 cycle is balanced when the crop is grown the next year.
This is the true meaning of recycling.
Biomass conversion, utilizing the same 'cracking' technology employed by
the petroleum industry will make charcoal to replace coal.
Charcoal contains no sulfur, so when it is burned for industry no sulfur
is emitted from the process. Sulfur is the primary cause of acid rain.
The rainfall in New England often falls between household vinegar and lemon
juice in its acidity on the -ph scale. This is bad for every cell membrane
it contacts, doing the most harm to the simplest life forms.
The biomass cracking process also produces nonsulfur fuel oil to replace
fossil fuels. Again, no sulfur is released and the new CO2 doesn't rise
when harvested biomass is used for fuel.
BIOMASS FOR ENERGY ABUNDANCE
The gasses that remain after the charcoal and fuel oils are ectracted
from hemp can be used for dribing electric power co-generators, too!
This biomass "cracking" process can produce methanol or charcoal fuel,
as well as the basic chemicals of industry: acetone, ethyl acetate, tar,
pitch and creosote. The Ford Motor Co. successfully operated a biomass
'cracking' plant in the 1930's at Iron Mountain, Michigan, using trees.
Hemp was too costly at that time, due to the labor costs of hand
harvesting.
Finally, hemp seed contains 30% (by volume) oil. This oil makes high
grade diesel fuel oil and aircraft engine and precision machine oil.
Remember, throughout history hemp seed was made into fuel oil: the genii's
lamp burned hemp seed oil, as did Abraham the prophet's and Abraham
Lincoln's.
Only whale oil came near hempseed oil in popularity for fuel.
When Rudolph Diesel invented his diesel engine, he intended to fuel it
"by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils"
Of course all these benefits can come from hemp, a plant uniquely suited
to grow and thrive practically anywhere on Earth and to be used to reclaim
marginal land and help ease the desertification of the planet.
Hemp is 77% cellulose, a basic chemical feed stock (industrial raw
material) used in the production of chemicals, plastics and fibers.
Depending on which U.S. agricultural report is correct, an acre of full
grown hemp plants can sustainably provide from four to 50 to even 100 times
the cellulose found in cornstalks, kenaf, or sugar cane--the planet's next
hightest annual cellulose plants. In most places, hemp can be harvested
twice a year and, in warmer areas such as southern California, Texas,
Florida and the like, it could be a "year round" crop. Hemp has a short
growing season and can be planted after food crops have been harvested.
An independent, semi-rural network of efficient and automomous farmers
will become the key economic player in the production of energy in this
country.
The United States government pays (in cash or in "kind") for farmers to
refrain from growing on 89 million acres of farmland each year, called the
soil bank.
Ten million of these acres in hemp would be the equivalent of 500
million to one billion acres of corn.
Hemp fuel derivatives, along with the recycling of paper, etc., would be
enough to run America virtually without oil, except as petroleum
fertilizer.
And 10 million to 89 million acres of hemp or other woody annual biomass
planted on the this restricted, unplanted fallow farmland (our soil bank)
would make energy a whole new ball game and be a real attempt at doing
something to save the Earth.
FAMILY FARMS OR FOSSIL FUELS
In about 10 years, when our petroleum resources have dwindled to 20% of
their original size, America will have four choices:
*Burn all our poisonous coal;
*Go to war over foreign oil;
*Cut down our forests for fuel;or
*Grow and process a variety of environmentally safe fuels from
biomass.
Farming only 6% of continental U.S. acreage with biomass would provide
all of America's energy needs and independence on fossil fuels. 'Illegal'
hemp is Earth's #1 biomass resource: capable of producing 10 tons per acre
in four months.
Hemp is easy on the soil, and ideal crop for the semi-acrid west and
open range land. (Adam Beatty, vice president of the Kentucky Agricultural
Society, reported instances of good crops of hemp on the same ground for 14
years in a row without a decline in yield. "Southern Agriculture," A.
Beatty, C.M. Saxon & Co., NY; 1843. p. 113.)
It is the only biomass source available that is capable of once again
making the U.S. energy independant.
Legal hemp would return billions of dollars worth of natural resource
potential back to the farmers and bring millions of good jobs in energy
production to America's heartland.
Hemp energy farmers will become our producers of raw materials for many
of the nation's needs. Family farms will be saved.
Crops can be tailored to the needs of the nation. Biomass can be grown
for fuel at about $30 per ton or seed crops can be pressed for oil; the
left over seed cake makes a high protein raw food resource.
Hemp grown for fiber will bring the paper and textile industry back to
the local communities and out of the hands of the multinational
corporations.
THE CATCH
The "catch" is obvious: The energy companies! They own most of the
petro- chemicals, pharmaceutical, liquor, and tobacco companies, and are
intertwined with the insurance companies and banks that own them in such a
way as to make untangling their various interlocking directorates
(plutocracies) a Herculean task for even the most dedicated researcher.
Many politicians now in power, according to the press, are bought and paid
for by the energy companies, and their U.S. government arm is the CIA, a.k.a.
"The Company" (Robert Ludlum, et al). The Bush/Quayle administration is
uniquely tied to oil, newspapers, and pharmaceuticals--as well as the CIA.
The world stuggle for money is actually a struggle for energy, as it is
through energy that we may produce food, shelter, transportation, and
entertainment. It is this struggle which often erupts into open war.
It may not be that if we remove the cause, the conflicts will also be
removed, but the possibility is strong enough that we must try.
Ultimately, the world has no other rational environmental choice but to
give up fossil fuel.
ENERGY SECURITY
At this point, we can tell OPEC goodbye forever. The national balance
of payments deficit is cast by the wayside and your personal energy bills
can by cut by at least 50%, and perhaps as much as 90% with biomass from
hemp and recycled waste. No more elderly or poor people freezing to death
or living in misery in the winter. If introduced to Third World nations,
hemp biomass could drastically cut our overseas aid and reasons for war,
while raising the quality of life there by quantum leaps. The world's
economy will/should boom as it never has before.
FREE ENTERPRISE--HIGH PROFIT
There are many other areas of the economy that would benefit from the
re- legalization of hemp and dr-regulation of commerce in non-smoking hemp,
according to the non-profit Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp (BACH).
Research by this Los Angeles-based business association indicated there are
around 50,000 non-smoking commercial uses for hemp that are economically
viable and market competitive. These include:
A CHANGE IN HIGH FASHION
The arrival of newly imported hemp-cotton blended clothing from China in
1989 signals the beginning of a new era for the rapidly changing world of
fashion. (Joint Venture Hempery and the Hemp Colony imports shirts and
shorts with the Stoned Wear{registered trademark} label can be found at a
number of retail outlets or ordered through the mail.) Public distaste for
the cruelty of using furs and leather, along with the search for
comfortable, natural fabrics to replace synthetics and fashion-conscious
society's ever-changing trends and tastes all offer a great opportunity to
re-invigorate the domestic textile manufacture and retail trades. Drawing
on hemp fibers' special attributes--absorbency, insulation and strength,
clothing manufacturers and designers will once again put hemp into linen to
produce new lines of durable and attractive clothing and textiles.
Outerwear, warm bedsheets, soft towels (hemp is more water obsorbent than
cotton), diapers (even disposable ones that you don't have to cut down
trees to make), uphostery, wall coverings, natural rugs--all these can now
be designed and made from hemp: generally better, cheaper and more
ecologically. Trade barriers and laws restricting the use of imported
cannabis fibers need to be removed. Hemp textiles will not be fully cost
competitive until hemp fiber can be grown and processed domestically, to
avoid import fees and lower the costs of transportation.
HOW AND WHY WOULD YOU EAT CANNABIS HEMP
The marijuana hemp seed (which is technically a fruit) is the second
most "complete"--with the eight essential amino acids--vegetable protein
source on our planet. Soybeans alone have a bit more protein. However,
hemp seed is many times cheaper and its protein potential can be utilized
better than soybean by the human body. In fact, the marijaunna seed is the
highest in enzymes and overall amino acids of any food on our planet,
including the soybean. Hemp seed extracts, like soybens, can be spiced to
taste like chicken, steak, or pork and can be used to make tofu-type curd
and margarine, at less cost than soybeans. (U.S. Agriculture Index; The
Marijuanna Farmers, 1972, Frazier.) Hemp seed can be pressed for its
vegetable oil, leaving a high protein seed cake as a byproduct. Sprouting
any seed improves its nutritional value, and hemp can be sprouted and used
like any other seed sprout for salads or cooking. "Hemp is a favorite
[bird seed] because of its nourishing oily content." (Birds in the Garden,
Margaret McKenny, 1939.) When cannabis hemp is grown for seed, fully half
the weight of the mature female plant is seed! One almost-instant
potential benefit is that all domesticated animals (dogs, cats), farm
animals and poultry could be fed a nearly complete diet with just hemp seed
extract protein and fat. These two factors alone (everything else being
equal) will allow animals maximum weight gain for less than current costs
without any artificial growth steroids or other drugs currently poisoning
the human race and food chain. In fact, hemp seed cake, the byproduct of
oil processing, was one of the world's principal animal feeds until this
century. Hemp seed can be ground into meal, cooked, sweetened and combined
with milk and made into a nutritional breakfast cereal--like oatmeal or
cream of wheat. This type of porridge is known as a gruel. Hemp leaves
can also be brewed into a healthy tea and either medicinally or drunk as a
beverage.
SPECTRE OF WORLDWIDE FAMINE
The marijuana seed's combination of amino acids, enzymes and edistins
make more food protein and nutrients usable, and better than anything else.
It allows a body with nutrition-blocking tuberculosis or almost any other
ailment to get maximum nourishment. By itself, widespread use of hemp seed
food protein would save many of the world's children currently dying from
protein starvation! An estimated 60% of all children born in Third World
countries (about 12-20 million a year) will die this way before reaching
five years of age. Many times that number have their lives dramatically
shortened and/or their brains decimated. Remember hemp is a hearty plant
that grows almost anywhere, even in adverse conditions. Futhermore, recent
studies indicate that depletion of the ozone layer threatens to reduce
world soya production by a substantial amount--up to 30% or even 50%
depending on the fluctuation of the density of the ozone shield. But hemp,
on the other hand, resists the damage caused by increasing ultraviolet
radiation and actually flourishes in it by producing more cannabinoids
which provide protection from ultraviolet light. Australia, as many
countries have thoughout history, survived two prolonged famines in the
19th century using nothing but marijuana seeds for protein and marijuana
leaves for roughage. It's no wonder that some Central and South Americans
hate America and want us out; they see us as ignorant killers. For years,
our government demanded the paraquat poisoning of their lands: Lands these
farmers had grown cannabis on by law since 1564, when Prince Phillip of
Spain had ordered it grown thoughout his empire to provide food, sails,
rope, towels, sheets and shirts--as well as providing one of the people's
most important folk medicines for fever, childbirth, epilepsy, and
poultices for rheumatism. Today if caught growing their old staple,
cannabis, their U.S. supported government/military expropriates their
lands. In exchange for doing this to their people, the leaders then
qualify for American foreign and military aid; all because of marijuana,
one of their people's oldest livelihoods, folk medicines, food staples and
joys.
A FUNDAMENTAL BIOLOGICAL LINK IN THE FOOD CHAIN
Our politicians who made these marijuana prohibition laws based on years
of disinformation, may have doomed not only birds but the human race to
extinction from another direction. Birds in the wild are essential to the
food chain; and they continue to diminish in population due to--among other
things, such as petrochemical pesticides--the lack of hemp seed! With hemp
seed in their diet, birds will live 10-20% longer. And their feathers have
more oil, allowing longer flight. There were more than 10 million acres of
seed-laden cannabis hemp growing wild in the U.S. prior to 1937, feeding
hundreds of millions of birds as their favorite and most necessary food
until our government began its policy of total eradication of this primary
link in the food chain. Oblivious to these inherent biocide (killing all
life) dangers, our government
(Reagan/Bush/Quayle/Rangel/Biden/Bennett/DuPont, et al.) continues to
escalate these programs of extinction unabated, both here and abroad, at
the insistence of the DEA. And not only hemp (read planet savior): DuPont
has created strains of grain--for example wheat--that will only grow with
thier petro-chemical fertilizers. Their intention is to eradicate the
surviving natural wheat and rye seeds, in the name of their personal
corporate profits, leaving the planet (and all humans) soley at their
corporate mercy for their hybrid strains which must have their
petro-chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Corn is already so hybridized
that it is not expected to last 50 years without human cultivation. If for
any reason these hybrids die out--as hybrids are apt to do--we will be
without wheat forever.
STURDY PAPER PRODUCTS
The devastated environments and job markets of American Nothwest and
other timber regions stand to make a dramatic comeback once hemp is
reintroduced to the domestic paper industry. Paper mills can return to
full production levels and loggers will find new work in hemp trades.
Truck drivers can continue to haul pulp to the mills, and lumber for
contruction, although the price of lumber will go down as other demands on
our timber resources are reduce by substituting farm-grown hemp for forest
grown wood pulp. There will also be a lot of work to do in reforestation.
Our rivers will go through a period of recovery following the 60-80%
reduction of paper making chemicals being dumped into them when hemp
replaces wood pulp in the paper industry. This means more fish and more
fishing, as well as increased camping and tourism in the beautiful and
vital new growth forest regions.
SPIN-OFF TRADES & TAXES
Hemp cellulose and oils can be used for literally tens of thousands of
other uses, from paints to dynamite. As each new hemp trade develops,
money will flow from it to re-energize seemingly unrelated areas of the
economy. The American worker and soon-to-be-rich entrepreneurs will bring
millions of new jobs and new products to the marketplace. They will also
buy thousands of homes, cars and other non-hemp hoods; thus stimulating a
real economic expansion based on the ripple effect, rather than
trickle-down economics-- pumping money directly into the bloodstream of the
American heartland and commodities areas. Farms, banks and investment
houses would also realize large profits, and the billions of hemp-dollars
in the legitimate economy would increase tax revenues and increase the
liquid capital available for investment and purposing of consumer goods.
Federal, state and local governments would realize a windfall of hundreds
of millions of dollars in tax revenues without raising taxes. "If the
marijauna, cocaine and heroin markets were legal, state and federal
governments would collect billions of dollars annually,"(assistant
professor of politics at Princeton University Ethan) Nadleman said.
"Instead, they expend billions in what amounts to a subsidy of organized
criminals."(L.A. Times, Nov.20, 1989, p.A-18.) And of course, there's all
the money already being made off smoking marijuana; $43 billion in 1988,
according to the DEA. Add to that the huge (but surpressed) home growing
and smoking accessories industries, as well as the necessary farm equipment
for production, looms, etc, and hemp could erase the national debt in a
matter of a few short years. Land values will rise in depressed rural
areas, helping rescue farmers, developers and speculators who might
otherwise have to default on loans and further worsen the savings and loan
crisis.
LAND & SOIL RECLAMATION
Land reclamation is the final and perhaps most compelling economical and
ecological arguement for hemp cultivation. Until this century, our
pioneers and ordinary American farmers used cannabis to clear fields for
planting, as a fallow year crop, and after forest fires to prevent
mudslides and loss of watershed. Hemp seeds put down a 10- to 12- inch
root in only 30 days, compared to the one-inch root put down by the rye or
barley grass presently used by the U.S. Government. Southern California,
Utah and other states used cannabis routinely in this manner until about
1915. It breaks up compacted, overworked soil. In the formerly lush
Himalaya region of Bangladesh, Nepal and Tibet there is now only a light
moss covering left as flash floods wash thousands of tons of topsoil away.
In 1964, Bangladesh (from bhang-cannabis, la-land, desh-people) signed an
'anti-drug' agreement with the U.S. not to grow hemp. Since that time the
'marijauna-land-people' have suffered disease, starvation and decimation,
due to unrestained flooding. Hemp seeds sown free from airplanes flying
over eroding soil could reclaim land the world over. The farmed out desert
regions can be brought back year after year, not only slowing the genocide
of starvation but easing threat of war and violent revolution.
NATURAL GUARD
Instead of National Guard, why not establish a Natural Guard of
environmental soldiers to be our front line for survival--planting trees,
harvesting biomass (eg. hemp) from marginal farm lands and re-building the
infra-structure of America: Our roads, bridges, dams, canals, railroad
tracks. Isn't this the humane, civilized and socially responsible way to use
our human resources, rather than warehousing people like animals in prison?
OUR CHALLENGE TO THE WORLD: TRY TO PROVE US WRONG--
If all fossil fuels and their derivatives (coal, oil, natural gas,
synthetic fibers and petrochemicals) as well as the deforestation of trees
for paper and agriculture (e.g., Brazilian & Indonesian rainforests), are
banned from use in order to save the planet, preserve the ozone layer and
reverse the greenhouse effect with its global warming trend: Then there is
only one known renewable natural resource able to provide all(underlined)
of the following goods and essentials such as paper and textiles, meet all
the world's transportation, home and industrial energy needs, and clean the
atmosphere-- all at the same time--our old standby that did it all before:
Cannabis Hemp . . . Marijauna!
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