The Environmental Case for Hemp
what if i told you that cannabis real
impact on our society
isn’t going to be medical or
recreational it’s going to be industrial
every 60 seconds in the u.s we lose
three acres of farmland to climate
change and to urban sprawl
now in that same minute all over the
world 250 babies are born
and 105 people die now
each one of those new babies is going to
need food clothing and shelter for the
rest of their historically long lives
that’s about 72 years of the current
average now that’s a problem for us
because it means that our generation is
going to have to provide for more people
than ever before
with fewer natural resources than ever
before and we’re gonna have to figure
out how to do it in a way that doesn’t
make climate change even worse
which brings us to our current situation
if we expect to thrive in the future
not just as a country but as a species
then we have until 2050 to get the
entire global economy to
net zero emissions so we can keep
climate change under control and avoid
the worst of the warming
that is a single generation now for
reference u.s emissions actually did go
down in 2020 by
almost 10 percent which is awesome but
the only reason that happened really is
because the kova 19 pandemic has
essentially shut off our economy for the
last 12 months
that’s not a long-term strategy now as
we start to recover
we have to find ways to get our
emissions down by 10 percent
every single year if we’re going to keep
the situation in check
we are in the beginning stages of what
is without a doubt the biggest
environmental
economic and logistical challenge that
humanity has ever faced
and i want to take a second here and
just get away from the abstractions and
remind everybody
what failure to solve this problem
really looks like failure to achieve net
zero emissions on time
means that climate change just keeps on
getting worse possibly past the point of
no return
it means that tens of millions of people
possibly hundreds of millions of people
are going to die from starvation disease
and extreme weather events
it could mean that our kids inherit a
dangerously unstable world
where conflict and world war are back on
the menu it’s not hyperbole at all
to say that achieving that zero
emissions is the biggest issue of the
21st century and the greatest challenge
of our generation
but how can we fix our economic system
without
sacrificing the real progress that’s
been made how can we
decarbonize an economy addicted to
fossil fuels
without destroying it well the answer is
we can’t decarbonize it at least not
entirely
the problem with trying to take carbon
out of the picture altogether is that
it’s just
it’s just not practical yeah
decarbonization makes
sense in some places technologies like
wind and solar energy electric vehicles
these can significantly reduce our need
for fossil fuels but oil is used for a
lot more than just energy and transport
organic chemistry is based on carbon and
a lot of our best stuff
comes from the carbons that we find in
oil useful stuff things like
fertilizers and medicines plastics and
pretty much all of our chemicals so
unless we’re willing to forego modern
technology and just
lop a few decades off the global life
expectancy we can’t get rid of carbon
altogether
what we can do is transition from making
our stuff out of fossil-based carbon
sources like oil and gas
to using renewable carbon
now renewable carbon is a very simple
concept instead of adding more
and more and more carbon into the
atmosphere by extracting new fossil
fuels out of the ground
we can actually take the carbon that’s
already been emitted into the atmosphere
and recycle it using one of nature’s
oldest and most powerful tools
photosynthesis the growing of plants
instead of
digging our carbon out of the geosphere
we can actually grow it in the biosphere
using what’s already in the air
that way the net amount of carbon in the
system stays exactly the same
this is what carbon neutrality means the
equivalent to decarbonization in the
energy and transportation sectors
is for chemical and material industries
to transition from fossil-based carbon
sources
to renewable carbon sources this is
where industrial hemp comes in
now industrial hemp refers to the plant
cannabis sativa l
not that one this one and
this one and those ones and
this one you see cannabis is a lot like
dogs
there are hundreds of different breeds
of cannabis that we call
cultivars now like dog breeds these
cultivars have been
bred for specific purposes and they look
and behave very differently from each
other
you’ve probably heard about cbd at this
point which comes from high cannabinoid
cultivars
but you might not be aware of industrial
hemp or how the two differ
industrial hemp refers to cultivars that
have been bred specifically for their
fiber
these are plants that can grow up to 20
feet tall and look more like corn or
sugar cane than cannabis
hemp fiber is the strongest natural
fiber in the world but more importantly
it is incredibly versatile the reason
that hemp is such a big deal
is because it is one of the only
renewable resources we have
that can hold a candle to the
versatility of petroleum
there are more than 25 000 different
carbon neutral
low waste products that can be
manufactured out of hemp everything from
bioplastics and chemicals to
environmentally friendly building
materials and textiles
even advanced stuff like graphene and
super capacitors all of these can be
made affordably
and in an environmentally neutral way
out of hemp
to understand why that is why hemp is
such an ideal source of renewable carbon
we have to take a look at the carbon
cycle itself
now if high school was a long time ago
don’t worry we’re gonna do a quick recap
here
the carbon cycle is the process by which
carbon flows from the atmosphere
into plants and animals into the earth
and then back into the atmosphere
it is a key tool that the planet uses to
regulate its temperature
now ordinarily the carbon cycle is a
closed system it’s a zero-sum game
just as much carbon gets released into
the atmosphere as gets absorbed
plants take carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere they release those oxygen
molecules
they store the carbon in the structure
of the plant itself and then either that
plant will eventually die
and release that carbon back into the
atmosphere through decomposition or
it’ll be consumed by an organism and
released in the form of
methane the problem is that human
activities have added so much extra
carbon to this cycle
that it has become completely out of
balance and now we have to find ways to
get rid of all that extra carbon in
order to mitigate the effects of climate
change
now the first thing we need to do here
is stop the bleeding we
can’t afford to keep adding more and
more and more carbon into the system
it’s not sustainable clearly
fossil-based carbon sources are not a
long-term solution
we have to build an emissions neutral
circular carbon economy as the basis for
most of our physical products and
materials
this is where hemp can play its role now
it might not be the lead role but it is
definitely in the running for best
supporting character
like every other plant in the world hemp
grows through photosynthesis
again it takes carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere it releases the oxygen
it stores that carbon in the structure
of the plant in its fiber
but then instead of decomposing or
getting eaten we can actually turn that
plant into a product
when you see a product that’s been made
out of industrial hemp
say say a plastic spoon for example that
product was quite literally made by
taking carbon out of the atmosphere and
transforming it into something
useful this is why hemp products can be
carbon neutral
and if you do it right they can even be
carbon negative they can actually take
more carbon out of the atmosphere than
it takes to manufacture the materials
themselves now i need to be really
careful here because
no one’s doing that successfully at
scale yet but
even if these products don’t quite add
up to net carbon negativity it is still
a
huge improvement over the current system
we have because most of the carbon
savings that we’re talking about here
upwards of 70 come from not having to
drill
extract and refine oil in the first
place
now the other major benefit to hemp as a
natural resource is its ability to
reduce
deforestation there is no better carbon
capture technology yet invented than the
tree
and so long as we live in a world where
trees are worth more dead than alive
well solving the climate crisis is
probably going to remain
out of reach since 1990 the earth has
lost more than 320 million square acres
of forested land
that is an area slightly larger than the
entire country of south africa
so much forest is lost each year as a
matter of fact that if deforestation was
a country
it would rank third in the world for
carbon equivalent emissions
right after china and the u.s hemp can
help reduce deforestation by replacing a
number of timber products
in addition to the plant’s fiber the
core of the plant is made from this
woody material over here that we call
the herd
now if you think of yourself hey that
looks a lot like wood chips you’re right
it’s exactly like wood chips and it can
be used for any application that wood
chips are currently used for
it’s not normally used to replace load
bearing lumber but hemp can replace
trees as the primary source of paper and
pulp products
which make up more than 40 percent of
all timber consumption
every year we produce more than 400
million metric tons of paper
and it costs us more than a billion
trees
think about that a billion trees every
single year
these are trees that would otherwise be
left standing doing what trees do
eating up carbon and maintaining
biodiversity
but it doesn’t stop there hemp can
replace a whole swath of timber products
particleboard charcoal and flooring
these three categories alone
cost us more than 55 billion pounds of
wood annually
all of them can be manufactured
affordably and with the same quality
out of hemp anything wood can do
hemp can do cleaner in countries like
brazil where more than 20 percent of the
amazon rainforest has been destroyed due
to illegal logging
hemp replacing wood for charcoal alone
could save more than
hundred million trees
by replacing lumber products in a
carbon-neutral way with hemp
we can leave billions upon billions of
more trees standing to do what they do
best
sequester even more carbon now climate
change is a time-sensitive issue
it’s actually it’s actually the
time-sensitive issue
the sooner we can get to net zero
emissions the better our odds are of
getting out of the 21st century intact
one of the best arguments for industrial
hemp then is the speed with which it can
be
deployed this is a technology that we
already
understand for the most part and we can
bring it up to scale whenever we decide
that we want to
we can’t afford to wait around for
flying cars or
some vague miracle technology that we
might discover to save us
we need to take action now not in 10
years
not in five years not next year now
industrial hemp can help us wean the
economy off of fossil fuels
and onto a more renewable track
still it is important not to exaggerate
especially in my industry
industrial hemp has a lot of potential
but it’s not
a panacea okay hemp’s not gonna
solve the climate crisis all by itself
and it’s not a miracle crop
it’s another tool in our arsenal against
the biggest threat facing the world
today
hemp’s not gonna save the world but it
sure could help