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# Give Up Your Weed for the Climate’s Sake
- URL: https://goodoil.news/give-up-your-weed-for-the-climates-sake/
- Published: 2021-03-14T22:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-03-14T17:40:13.000Z
- Author: Cam Slater
- Tags: Climate Change, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 02:14

The finger-wagging miserablists of the Krazy Klimate Kult love to lecture us about the wickedness of such planet-killing pastimes as driving to work or taking a plane ride, even playing video games. Industry regularly comes under fire, too, for its “carbon footprint”.

But they’re notably selective in what they choose to condemn. The gargantuan carbon – not to mention environmental – footprint of the wind turbine and solar industries is conveniently overlooked by the otherwise gimlet-eyed zealots of the Church of Gaia.

It seems that another “progressive” industry has also been getting an undeserved free pass.

> **Legal cannabis production in Colorado emits more greenhouse gases than the state’s coal mining industry, researchers analysing the sector’s energy use have found.**

Despite the ostensible excuse of “medical marijuana”, the living reality is that the recreational industry has all-but overwhelmed the medical one. Colour me surprised. Not that I care if anyone was to get baked, but the hypocrisy is palpable.

And so are the carbon emissions.

> **Hailey Summers** and her colleagues at Colorado State University have quantified and analysed the greenhouse gas emissions produced by cannabis growers.  
>  
> They found that emissions varied widely by state, from 2.3 to 5.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per kilogram of dried flower produced.  
>  
> In Colorado, the emissions add up to around 2.6 megatonnes of CO2e, which is more than that from the state’s coal mining at 1.8 megatonnes of CO2e.

**Those are pretty staggering numbers. By comparison, that’s equal to about a week’s worth of New Zealand’s total emissions.**

> “The emissions that come from growing 1 ounce, depending on where it’s grown in the US, is about the same as burning 7 to 16 gallons of gasoline,” says Summers.

Most weed in the US is grown indoors, in energy-hungry climate-controlled environments with high-powered lighting systems.

But, as is so often the case, money trumps environmental conscience.

> “One of the challenges associated with this is that the profit margins are so huge that you don’t have to be making super energy-conscious decisions,” says team member **Jason Quinn**\[…\]  
>  
> The carbon footprint of the cannabis industry is even larger than this study indicates, says **Evan Mills**, formerly at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, as the team didn’t look at emissions associated with storage and processing.  
>  
> Illegal cannabis production is also likely to be more highly emitting, he says. “The energy profile of black-market production is distinctly different in that it frequently involves on-site diesel generators, which are often less efficient and more polluting per kilowatt-hour than grid-purchased electricity.”  
>  
> [New Scientist](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2270366-colorados-legal-cannabis-farms-emit-more-carbon-than-its-coal-mines/?ref=goodoil.news)

So, is it “go green – get off the green”? Try selling that prescription to the Greens.

**Please share this article so that others can discover *The BFD***