By Paul J. von Hartmann
“For a long time I have been concerned with . . . how our main economic measures failed to take into account environmental degradation and resource depletion. If . . . growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment . . . our statistics should warn us. But because GDP [Gross Domestic Product] didn’t include resource depletion and environmental degradation, we typically get an excessively rosy picture.” ~ Joseph E Stiglitz
Humanity has failed to realistically assess the long-term, functional importance of integrated natural systems. Bingeing on environmental toxins, mankind has been ignoring the laws of nature in order to make more money for the past 100 years. Moral detachment from responsible respect for nature; the quality of life on Earth for future generations is a corporate afterthought, typically dismissed as being too costly for meaningful concern.
It would cost trillions of dollars for our largest industries to be environmentally responsible. Accounting for clean air, unpolluted water and uncontaminated soil would make several major industries unprofitable or obsolete. “Political reality” serves the cult of toxic industrialism, supplanting ancient traditions of stewardship for the Earth. Future generations have been forgotten in the cypher of progress, abandoned in pursuit of immediate profit at any cost.
‘Inherently unsustainable’
Over time, chemical industrialism has proven to be inherently unsustainable. After decades of poisoning Earth’s atmosphere, water, air and soil, we are finally forced to admit we are facing extinction. Foundering in chemical and radioactive waste, we can no longer ignore or deny that fundamental changes must happen, now.
Motivated by GDP and industry’s insatiable desire to control unevenly distributed, toxic energy resources, radical disintegration of the natural order is leading to global extinction. Ignoring the primary importance of nature’s integrated systems, mankind continues to consume toxins with little or no regard for the predictable result. Humanity is in the initial stages of systems disintegration right now. The point at which irreversible systemic collapse becomes unavoidable will be reached in our lifetimes, if it hasn’t been already.
The good news
The good news is that cannabis hemp agriculture offers several unique and essential properties, necessary for repairing Earth’s systemic equilibrium. Most importantly, hemp is the most efficient, globally distributed crop there is, for turning sunlight into usable energy.
So-called “unquantifiable externalities” are the immeasurable, priceless things we can’t hang a price tag on. Quality of life, pure air, clean water and rich soil are universally valued, mostly in an abstract, often spiritual sense, but not in a corporate, numerical way. Since they can’t be assigned a number value, unquantifiables are routinely left out of the resource exploitation equation. Inevitably, the real price of industrial profit is eventually paid by people and animals downstream, geographically and chronologically. Generations that follow ours are heading toward degenerative health, a degraded environment, and violent collapse of the human social order, unless we act in a time-efficient, globally coordinated campaign of organic, non-GMO agriculture, immediately.
The spring planting season of 2020 is precious beyond measure. We don’t know how many growing seasons we have left before “cascading systems failures” and “non-linear extinction level events” become irreversible. (2) Indicator-species populations have been crashing for decades. Yet humans continue to consume toxic, gaiacidal resources degrading Earth’s environment, as though there were no alternatives. There are many things that can be done to heal the planet; but, there is only one plant possessing all of the properties necessary for doing everything that needs to be done, in the time we may have left to make a difference.
Repairing & healing
Cannabis hemp is uniquely qualified to replace fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Hemp can simultaneously repair Earth’s atmosphere, feed the world, end economic disparity, expand the arable base, and purify the hydrologic cycle. At the same time, Cannabis can heal our bodies and calm our minds.
A crop so useful and beneficial sounds too good to be true, making it especially difficult to talk about after eight decades of “drug war” propaganda. Whether our species is capable of making the requisite shift in value from “illegal” to essential remains to be seen.
The so-called “political reality” we’re presently slugging our way through can be characterized as “Cannabis is valuable but, (despite decades of gold standard science to the contrary) THC is still “dangerous” enough to require government oversight and regulation.” Because the lies of “Reefer Madness” persist, the scale of production is being suppressed, and availability is being constricted.
As awareness grows about the unique and essential environmental services of Cannabis, a truly free market will eventually evolve infrastructural changes, in response to the influence of clean, inexpensive, hemp-based fuels. The most time efficient, globally distributed and cost-effective means of providing energy to billions of people, while healing the Earth, is in the stalk of the hemp plant.
Since Cannabis is the only crop that produces complete nutrition and sustainable biofuels from the same harvest, food security, nutrition and herbal therapeutic availability are vastly improved. The cellulose-rich stalks can be harvested and bio-digested to produce hydrogen, powering electrical generation. The seeds and leaves offer proteins, amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, chlorophyll and more.
‘Pioneer’ crop
Expansion of the arable base using a non-invasive “pioneer” crop that produces complete nutrition for man and animals; and sustainable energy, as it heals the air, water and soil, is essential in order to increase the carrying capacity of this planet. Unless this is done soon, population displacement and species extinction will continue to get worse.
All nations must coordinate a global agricultural campaign, repurposing their military forces from armies to farmers. The mission is to plant cannabis in every soil and climate condition to which it may be able to adapt. That would be the most logical way to achieve balanced atmospheric conditions, and essential resource distribution in the shortest span of time possible.
Whether mankind is capable of achieving the requisite polar shift in Cannabis value, from “illegal” to essential, will determine whether or not our children and grandchildren will survive on Earth, beyond the 21st century.
Paul J. von Hartmann, founder of the California Cannabis Ministry, is an international cannabis scholar, photojournalist and filmmaker. He is the author of Cannabis vs. Climate Change (2014)
