The Emperor Wears No Clothes

by Jack Herer

Family Farms or Fossil Fuels?

In 2000, when our petroleum resources have dwindled to 20% of their original size, America will have 6 choices to avoid economic and environmental ruin:

– Use more coal, further polluting the environment;

– Continue to fund nuclear power and risk annihilation of the planet.

– Convert forests into fuel, permanently altering life sustaining ecosystems;

– Continually wage wars over foreign oil;

– Build massive wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal energy systems;

– Establish energy farms to grow biomass fuels.

The last two choices are the only rational, life sustaining choices.

Farming only 6% of continential U.S. acreage with biomass crops would provide all of America’s gas and oil energy needs, ending dependence upon fossil fuels.

Manahan, Stanley E., Environmental Chemistry, 4th edition.

Hemp is Earth’s number one biomass resource; it is capable of producing 10 tons per acre in four months. Hemp is easy on the soil,* sheds its lush foliage throughout the season, adding mulch to the soil and helping retain moisture. Hemp is an ideal crop for the semiarid 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. Betty, A., Southern Agriculture, C.M. Saxton & Co., NY: 1843, pg. 113. USDA Yearbook, 1913.

Hemp is the only biomass source available that is capable of making the U.S. energy independent. Ultimately, the world has no other rational environmental choice but to give up fossil fuels.